The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868
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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868

Author: Various

Release date: October 13, 2017 [eBook #55736]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Don Kostuch

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 07, APRIL 1868 TO SEPTEMBER, 1868 ***

[Transcriber's note: This text is derived from http://www.archive.org/details/catholicworld07pauluoft. Page numbers are shown in curly braces, such as {123}. They have been moved to the nearest sentence break.]

The Catholic World.
A Monthly Magazine
of
General Literature and Science.

Vol. VII.
April To September, 1868.

New York:
The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau Street.
1868.

John A. Gray & Green,
Printers,
16 and 18 Jacob St., New York.

Contents.

A Heroine of Conjugal Love, 781. A New Face on an Old Question, 577. Anecdotical Memoirs of Emperor Nicholas I., 683. A Sister's Story, 707. Ancient Irish Church, 764. Abyssinia and King Theodore, 265.

Baltimore, Second Plenary Council of, 618. Breton Legend of St. Christopher, 710. Bretons, Faith and Poetry of, 567. Bible and the Catholic Church, 657. Bishop Doyle, 44. Bound with Paul, 389.

Catacombs, Children's Graves in, 401. Campion, Edmund, 289. Catholics in England, Condition and Prospects of, 487. Catholic Church and the Bible, 657. Catholic Sunday-School Union, 300. Children's Graves in the Catacombs, 401. Crisis, The Episcopalian, 37. Christopher, St., Breton Legend of, 710. Constantinople, Harem Life in, 407. Conscience, Plea for Liberty of, 433. Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England, 487. Confessional, Episcopalian, 372. Conscript, Story of a, 26. Colony of the Insane, Gheel, 824. Conjugal Love, Heroine of, 781. Council of Baltimore, Second Plenary, 618. Cowper, 347. Country Church, a Plan for, 135. Cousin, Victor, and the Church Review, 95. Cross, The, 21. Count Ladislas Zamoyski, 650. Church, Ancient Irish, 764. Church, Catholic, and the Bible, 657. Church Review, and Victor Cousin, 95. Churches, United, of England and Ireland, 200. Church, Early Irish, 336.

Draper, Professor, Books of, 155. De Garaison, Notre Dame, 644. Doyle, Bishop, 44. Duties, Household, 700.

Early Irish Church, 356. England and Ireland, United Churches of, 200. England, Catholics of, Condition and Prospects, 487. Episcopalian Crisis, 37. Episcopalian Confessional, 372. Education, Popular, 228. Edmund Campion, 289. European Prison Discipline, 772. Egypt, Harem Life in, 407.

Face, New, on an Old Question, 577. Faith and Science, 338, 464. Flaminia, 795. Faith and Poetry of the Bretons, 567. Flight of Spiders, 414. Florence Athern's Trial, 213.

Garaison, Notre Dame de, 644. Graves, Children's, in the Catacombs, 401. Gathering, Roman, 191. Glastonbury, Legend of, 517. Gheel, Colony of the Insane, 824. Girl, Italian, of our Day, 364, 343, 626. Glimpses of Tuscany— The Duomo, 479; The Boboli Gardens, 679. Good Works, Merit of, 125.

Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople, 407. Heroine of Conjugal Love, 781. History, How told in the Year 3000, 130. Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac, 753. Holy Week in Jerusalem, 77. How our History will be told in the Year 3000, 130.

Insane, Colony of, at Gheel, 824. Italian Girl of our Day, 364, 543, 626. Irish Church, Early, 356. Irish Church, Ancient, 764. "Is it Honest?" 239. Ireland, Protestant Church of, 200.

Jerusalem, Holy Week in, 77. John Sterling, 811. John Tauler, 422.

King Theodore of Abyssinia, 265. Keeble, 347.

La Fayette, Madame de, 781. Legend of Glastonbury, 317. Liberty of Conscience, Plea for, 433. Life of St. Paula, sketches of, 380, 508, 670. Life, Harem, in Egypt and Constantinople, 407. Life's Charity, 839. Last Gasp of the Anti-Catholic Faction, 850.

Madame de La Fayette, 731. Magas; or, Long Ago, 39, 256. Miscellany, 139. Merit of Good Works, 125. Memoirs of Count Segur, 633. Monks of the West, 1.

New Face on an Old Question, 577. Newgate, 772. Newman's Poems, 609. Nellie Netterville, 82, 173, 307, 445, 589, 736. New York City, Sanitary and Moral Condition of, 553, 712 Nicholas, Emperor, Memoirs of, 683. Notre Dame de Garaison, 644.

O'Neil and O'Donnell in Exile, 11.

Quietist Poetry, 347.

Race, The Human, Unity of, 67. Rights of Catholic Women, 846. Roman Gathering, 191.

St. Paula, Sketches of her Life, 380, 508, 670.
St. Christopher, Breton Legend of, 710.
Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert, 76, 227, 572.
Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City, 553, 712.
Segur, Count, Memoirs of, 633.
Shepherdess of Pibrac, 753.
Sterling, John, 811.
Science and Faith, 338, 464.
Sketches of the Life of St. Paula, 380, 508, 670.
Sister Simplicia, 115.
Sister's Story, 707.
Spiders, Flight of, 414.
Story of a Conscript, 26.
Story, a Sister's, 707.

Tauler, John, 422.
The Cross, 21.
The Church Review and Victor Cousin, 95.
The Episcopalian Crisis, 37.
The Rights of Catholic Women, 846.
The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, 618.
The Story of a Conscript, 26.
Theodore, King of Abyssinia, 265.
Tennyson in his Catholic Aspects, 145.

Unity of the Human Race, 67.
United Churches of England and Ireland, 200.

Veneration of Saints and Holy Images, 721.

Wordsworth, 347.
Women, Catholic, Rights of 846.

Zamoyski, Count Ladislas, 650.

Poetry.

All-Souls' Day—1867, 236.

Benediction, 444.

Elegy of St. Prudentius, 761.

Full of Grace, 129.

Iona to Erin, 57.

Love's Burden, 212.

Morning at Spring Park, 174.
My Angel, 363.

One Fold, 336.

Poland, 154.

St. Columba, 823.
Sonnet on "Le Récit d'une Soeur," 306.
St. Mary Magdalen, 476.
Sonnet, 617.

Tears of Jesus, 113.
To the Count de Montalembert, 516.

Wild Flowers, 566.

New Publications.

Assemblée Générale des Catholiques en Belge, 431.
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1867, 574.
Appleton's Short Trip to France, 717.

Book of Moses, 142.

Campbell's Works, 720.
Catholic Sunday-School Library, 431.
Catholic Crusoe, 719.
Chandler's New Fourth Reader, 575.
Chemical Change in the Eucharist, 285.
Count Lucanor, 140,

De Costa's Lake George, 718.
Discussions in Theology, Skinner, 573.

Elinor Johnson, 576.

Folks and Fairies, 144.

Great Day, 288.
Gillet's Democracy, 719.

Hints on the Formation of Religious Opinions, 573.
Histoire de France, 719.
House Painting, 720.

Infant Bridal, by Aubrey de Vere, 143.
Imitation of Christ, Spiritual Combat, etc., 575.
Irish Homes and Irish Hearts, 576.

Life of St. Catharine of Sienna, 142.
Life in the West, 287.

Memoirs and Letters of Jennie C. White—Del Bal, 858.
Moses, Book of, 142.
Mozart, 288.
Margaret, a Story of Prairie Life, 576.

Newman's Parochial Sermons, 716.
Notes on the Rubrics of the Roman Missal, 574.
Northcote's Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna, 574.

Ozanam's Civilization, 430.
O'Kane's Notes on the Rubrics, 574,
O'Shea's Juvenile Library, 719.
On the Heights, 284.

Palmer's Hints on the Formation of Religions Opinions, 573.
Prayer the Key of Salvation, 143.
Peter Claver, 142.
Problems of the Age, 715.

Queen's Daughter, 720.

Red Cross, 575.
Reforme en Italic, 143.
Rossignoli's Choice of a State of Life, 576.
Rhymes of the Poets, 718.

St. Catharine of Sienna, Life of, 143.
St. Colomba, Apostle of Caledonia, 281.
Sanctuaries of the Madonna, 720.

Tales from the Diary of a Sister, 288.
The Catholic Crusoe, 719.
The Queen's Daughter, 720.
The Vickers and Purcell Controversy, 856.
The Woman Blessed by all Generations, 860.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. VII., No. 37.—April, 1868.

The Monks Of The West. [Footnote 1]
By The Count De Montalembert.

[Footnote 1: The Monks of tie West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. By the Count de Montalembert, Member of the French Academy. 5 vols. 8vo. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau Street, New York.]

In the galaxy of illustrious men whom God has given to France in this century, there is one whom history will place in the first rank. We mean the author of the Monks of the West, the Count de Montalembert. There has not been since the seventeenth century till now such an assemblage of men of genius and lofty character gathered round the standard of the church, combating for her and leaving behind them works that will never die. Attacked on all sides at once, the church has found magnanimous soldiers to bear the brunt of the battle, and meet her enemies in every quarter. Even though the victory has not yet been completely won, with such defenders she cannot doubt of final success and future triumph. How great are the names of Montalembert, Lacordaire, Ravignan, Dupanloup, Ozanam, Augustin Co-chin, the Prince de Broglie, de Falloux, Cauchy, and of so many others! The natural sciences, history, political economy, controversy, parliamentary debates, pulpit eloquence, have been studied and honored by these men; superior in all those sciences on account of the truth which they defend, and equal in talent to their most renowned rivals.

The figure of the Count de Montalembert stands conspicuous in that group of giant intellects by the universality of his eminent gifts. A historian full of erudition, an incomparable orator, and a writer combining the classic purity of the seventeenth century with the energy and fire of the nineteenth, an indefatigable polemic, a man of the world, yet an orthodox churchman, but above all a practical and fervent Christian; this great defender of Catholic truth has merited immortal praise from his contemporaries and from posterity.

Among all the works of this energetic champion of the faith. The Monks of the West holds indisputably the first place. It is the work of Montalembert's entire life. He has put into it his Benedictine erudition, his passionate love for truth, the charming and dramatic power of his style in the narration of events, his inimitable talent for painting in words the portraits of those famous characters whom he wishes to present to the eye of the reader; and their traits remain ineffaceably stamped on the mind. Especially does the soul of the true Christian breathe on every page of the volumes. For more than forty years their author bent piously over those austere forms of the Benedictine monks of the early ages to ask them the secret of their lives, of their virtues, of their influence on their country and their age. He has studied them with that infallible instinct of faith which had disclosed to him a hidden treasure in those old monastic ruins, and in those dusty and unexplored monuments of their contemporary literature; the treasure, namely, of the influence of the church acting on the barbarians through the monks. This is the leading idea of the whole work. It would be a mistake to expect, under the title of Monks of the West, a history of mere asceticism, or a species of continuation of the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert. Writers no longer treat, as that work does, the lives of the saints. Readers are not satisfied with the simple account of the virtues practised or the number of miracles performed by the canonized children of the church. Modern men want to look into the depths of a saint's soul; to know what kind of a human heart throbbed in his bosom, and how far he participated in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary human nature. The circumstances in which he lived and studied, the opinions formed of him by his contemporaries, are weighed, and the traces left by his sanctity or genius on the manners and institutions of his country are closely considered.

The history of The Monks of the West is nothing else than a history of civilization through monastic causes. The third, fourth, and fifth volumes just published contain a complete, profound, exact, and beautiful account of the conversion of Great Britain to Catholicity. No work could be more interesting, not only to Englishmen, but to all who speak the English tongue. Hence, but a few months after the French edition of these bulky volumes, an English translation of them was given to the public, and is now well known and becoming justly wide-spread in the United States.

Irish and Anglo-Saxons, Americans by birth or by adoption, Catholics and Protestants, there is not one of us who is not interested in a work which tells us from whom, and how, we have inherited our Christian faith. Even Germans will learn in the perusal of these volumes their religious origin; for it was from the British isles that the apostles of Germany went forth to their labors. The English language is the most universally spoken to-day; the sceptre of Britain rules an empire greater than that of Alexander or of any of the Caesars. The latest statistics tell us that there are one hundred and seventy-four millions of British subjects or vassals. The two Indies, vast Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean belong mostly to the Anglo-Saxon race, and feel its influence. But what are all those great conquests compared to these once British colonies, now called North America? Who can foresee the height to which may reach this vigorous graft, cut from the old oak, invigorated by the virgin soil of the new world, and which already spreads its shade over immense latitudes, and which promises to be the largest and most powerful country ever seen? Is it not therefore useful and interesting to study the religious origin of this extraordinary race? Is there an American in heart, or by birth, who is not bound to know the history of those to whom this privileged race owes its having received in so large a measure the three fundamental bases of all grandeur and stability in nations: the spirit of liberty, the family spirit, and the spirit of religion?

The history of the conversion of England by the monks answers all these questions. It comprises the apostleship of the Irish, and of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon elements during the sixth and seventh centuries. The Irish or Celtic portion of the history centres in St. Columba, whose majestic form towers above his age, illustrated by his virtues and influenced by his genius. The Roman element is represented by the monk Augustine, the first apostle of the Anglo-Saxons. Lastly, this race itself enters on the missionary career, and sends out as its first apostle a great man and a great saint, the monk Wilfrid, whose moral beauty of character rivals that of St. Columba. Shortly after these, as it were following in their shadow, walks the admirable and gentle Venerable Bede, the first English historian, the learned encyclopedist, alike the honor and glory of his countrymen, and of the learned of all nations.

We cannot resist the pleasure of giving, though it be but very incomplete and pale, a sketch of the great monk of Clonard, the apostle of Caledonia, St. Columba. [Footnote 2] Sprung from the noble race of O'Niall, which ruled Ireland during six centuries, educated at Clonard, in one of those immense monasteries which recalled the memory of the monastic cities of the Thebaid, he was the chief founder, though hardly twenty-nine years old, of a multitude of religious houses. More than thirty-seven in Ireland claim him as their founder. He was a poet of great renown, and a musician skilled in singing that national poetry of Erin, which so intimately harmonizes with Catholic faith. He lived in fraternal union with the other poets of his country, with those famous bards, whom he was afterward to protect and save from their enemies. Besides being a great traveller, like the most of the Irish saints and monks whose memory has been preserved by history, he had another passion for manuscripts. This passion had results which decided his destiny. Having shut himself up at night in a church, where he discovered the psalter of the Abbot Finnian, Columba found means to make a clandestine copy of it. Finnian complained of it as a theft. The case was brought to the chief monarch of Ireland, who decided against Columba. The copyist protested; anathematized the king, and raised against him in revolt the north and west of Hibernia. Columba's party conquered, and the recovered psalter, called the Psalter of Battles, became the national relic of the clan O'Donnell. This psalter still exists, to the great joy of the erudite patriots of Ireland.

[Footnote 2: The Catholic Publication Society will soon publish The Life of St. Columba, as given in the third volume of The Monks of the West.]

Nevertheless, as Christian blood had flowed for a comparative trifle, and through the fault of a monk, a synod was convened and Columba was excommunicated. He succeeded in having the sentence cancelled; but he was commanded to gain to God, by his preaching, as many souls as he had destroyed Christians in the battle of Cooldrewny. To this injunction his confessor added the hardest of penances for a soul so passionately attached, as was that of Columba, to his country and his friends. The penitent was compelled to exile himself from Ireland for ever. Columba submitted. Twelve of his disciples refused to leave him, and embarking with them on one of those large osier, hide-covered boats which the Celtic peoples were accustomed to use in navigation, he landed on an island called Oronsay. He ascended a hill near the shore, and looking toward the south, perceived that he could still see the Irish coast. He reëmbarked immediately, and sailed in quest of a more distant isle, from which his native land should be no longer visible. He at last touched the small desert island of Iona, and chose for his abode this unknown rock, which he has made a partaker of his own immortality.

We should read in M. de Montalembert's work the eloquent description of the Hebrides, and of that sandy and sterile shore of Iona, rendered glorious by so many virtues. "'We were now treading,' wrote Dr. Johnson, the great moralist of the eighteenth century, 'that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible.'[Footnote 3] And he recited with enthusiasm those verses from Goldsmith's Traveller:

'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by;
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band.
By forms unfashioned, fresh from nature's hand.
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul.
True to imagined right, above control,
While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.' [Footnote 4]

[Footnote 3: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. By Dr. Johnson,]

[Footnote 4: The Monks of the West, vol. iv. book xi. ch. 3.]

Grace had accomplished its work. Arrived at Iona, Columba, one of the most high-spirited and passionate of the Gaels of Hibernia, became a most humble penitent, a pattern of mortification to the monks, the most gentle of friends, and a most tender father. Having no other cell than a log cabin for seventy-six years, he slept in it on the bare ground, with a stone for his pillow. This hut was his oratory and library, into which, after working all day in the fields like the lowest of the brothers, he entered to meditate on the Holy Scripture and multiply copies of the sacred text. He is supposed to have transcribed with his own hand three hundred copies of the gospels. Devoted to his expiatory mission, he commenced by evangelizing the Dalriadian Scots, an Irish colony formed between the Picts of the north and the Britons of the south. This colony was on the western coast of Caledonia and in the neighboring islands, at the north of the mouth of the Clyde, in that tract of country afterward known by the name of Argyle. But these colonists were his countrymen. Soon he was called to lay hands on the head of their chief, thus inaugurating not only a new royalty, but also a new rite, which afterward became the most august solemnity in the life of Christian nations. This consecration of the Scot Aidan as King, by Columba, is the first authentic instance of the kind in the west. Later, crossing the Grampian hills, at the foot of which the victorious legions of Agricola stopped, and venturing in a frail skiff on Loch-Ness and the river which flows from it, he confronted those terrible Picts, the most depraved and ferocious of the barbarians, disputing, through an interpreter, with the Druids, thus attacked in their last retreat. He returned often to these savages, so that he finished, before his death, the conversion of the whole nation, dotting with churches and sanctuaries their forests, defiles, inaccessible mountains, their wild fens and their sparsely peopled isles. The vestiges of fifty-three of those churches are still traceable in modern Scotland, and even the most enlightened Protestant judges of the Scottish bench attribute the very ancient division of parishes in Scotland to the missionary monk of sacred Iona.

He never forgot, in the midst of his labors, his beloved Ireland. He had for her all the tender passion of the exile; a passion which let itself out in his songs, full of a charming melancholy. "Better to die in pure Ireland, than to live for ever here in Albania." [Footnote 5]

[Footnote 5: Vol. iii. book xi. ch. 2.]

To this cry of despair succeed more plaintive notes breathing resignation. In one of his elegies, he regrets not being able to sail once more on the lakes and gulfs of his fatherland, nor to listen to the song of the swans with his friend Comgall. He mourns especially his having to leave Erin through his own fault, on account of the blood shed in the battles which he had provoked. He envies his friend Cormac, who can return to his dear monastery of Durrow, to hearken there to the murmur of the winds among the oaks, and drink in the song of the blackbird and the cuckoo. As for him, Columba, everything in Ireland is dear to him, except the rulers that govern it! In another poem still more characteristic, he exclaims: "Oh! what delight to glide over the foam-crested waves of the sea, and see the breakers roll on the sandy beaches of Ireland! Oh! how swiftly my bark would bound over the waters, if its prow were turned toward my grove of oaks in Ireland! But the noble sea must only bear me for ever toward Albania, the gloomy land of the raven. My feet repose in my skiff, but my sad heart ever bleeds.
...
From the deck of my boat I cast my eyes over the billows, and the big tears stand in my moistened gray eyes, when I look toward Erin; toward Erin, where the birds sing so melodiously, and where the priests sing like the birds; where the young men are so gentle, and the old so wise; the nobles so illustrious and handsome, and the women so fair to wed. ... Young navigator, carry with thee my woes, bear them to Comgall the immortal. Bear with thee, noble youth, my prayer and my blessing: one half for Ireland; that she may receive seven-fold blessings! and the other half for Albania. Carry my benediction across the sea; carry it toward the west. My heart is broken within my bosom; if sudden death should befall me, it would be through my great love for the Gaels." [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6: Vol. iii. book xi. ch. 2.]

An opportunity was afforded him of seeing once more this beloved land of which he sang with such ardent enthusiasm. He had to accompany the king of the Dalriadians, whom he had just consecrated, to meet the supreme monarch of Ireland and other Irish princes and chiefs assembled in parliament at Drumkeath. There was question of recognizing the independence of the new Scottish royalty, hitherto the vassal and tributary of Erin. But as the exile had made a vow never again in this life to behold the men and women of Erin, he appeared in the national assembly with his eyes blindfolded, and his monk's cowl drawn over the bandage. Columba was listened to as an oracle in the parliament of Drumkeath. He not only obtained the complete emancipation of the Dalriadian colony, but he also saved the order of the bards, whose proscription had been demanded by the king of Ireland. They were for ever won over to Christianity by the holy monk, and, transformed into minstrels, continued for the future to be the most efficacious propagators of the spirit of patriotism, the indomitable prophets of national independence, and the faithful champions of catholic faith.

Arrived at the term of his career, the servant of God spent himself in vigils, fastings, and formidable macerations of the flesh. He knew in advance and predicted with certainty the day and the very hour when he should pass to a better life; and he made all things ready for his departure. He went to take leave of the monks who worked in the fields, in the only fertile portion of the island of Iona, on the western coast. He wished to visit and bless the granary of the community. He blessed the old white horse which used to carry from the sheep-fold of the monastery the milk which was consumed daily by the brothers. Having done this, he was barely able to ascend an eminence from which the whole island and monastery were visible, and from this elevated position he extended his hands and pronounced on the sanctuary which he had founded a prophetic benediction. "This little spot, so low and so narrow, will be greatly honored, not only by the kings and people of Scotland, but also by foreign chiefs and barbarous nations; it will be even venerated by the saints of other churches." He then descended to the monastery, entered his cell, and applied himself to his work for the last time. He was at that time busied in transcribing the psalter. At the thirty-third psalm, and the verse, "Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono," [Footnote 7] he ceased and said: "Here I must finish; Baithan will write the rest." After this he went to the church to assist at the vigils of Sunday; then returning to his cell, he sat down on the cold stones which had been his bed and pillow for over seventy years. There he entrusted his solitary companion with a last message for the community. This done, he never spoke more. But no sooner had the midnight bell tolled for matins, than he ran faster than the other monks to the church. His companion found him lying before the altar, and raising his head, placed it on his knees. The whole community soon arrived with lights. At the sight of their father dying, all wept. The abbot opened his eyes once more, looking around on all with a serene and joyous expression. Then, assisted by his companion, Columba lifted as well as he could his right hand, and silently blessed the whole choir of monks. His hands fell powerless to his sides, and he breathed his last.

[Footnote 7: "They that seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good." Ps. xxxiii. 11.]

What a scene! Such were the life and death of this great man and great saint. After having loved Ireland so much, he could repose nowhere more appropriately than in her sacred soil. His body was transported thither to the monastery of Down, and buried between the mortal remains of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. Thus those three names, for the future inseparable, became interwoven with the history and traditions, and engraved in the worship and on the memory, of the Irish people.

Such were the men to whom Ireland owed not only her indestructible faith, but also her intellectual and moral civilization. It is not sufficiently known that Ireland in the seventh century was regarded by all Europe as the principal focus of science and piety.

There, more than anywhere else, every monastery was a school, and every school a studio of calligraphy, where the artists were not confined to copying the Holy Scriptures alone; but where even the Greek and Latin authors were reproduced, sometimes in Celtic characters, with gloss and commentary in Irish, like that copy of Horace which contemporary erudition has discovered in the library of Berne. Besides, in all those monasteries, exact annals of passing events were recorded; and these annals still constitute the chief source of Irish history. We recognize in them a vast and continual development of serious literary and religious studies, far superior to anything found in any other European nation. Certain arts even, such as architecture, carving, metallurgy applied to the objects of public worship, were cultivated with success; not to speak of music, a knowledge of which was a common accomplishment not exclusively possessed by the learned, but also by the common people. The classic languages, not only the Latin, but even in an especial manner the Greek, were spoken, written, and studied with a sort of passion, which shows the sway which intellectual preoccupations held over those ardent Celtic minds.

But whatever may have been the influence of Columba on the Picts and Scots, neither he nor his successors could exercise any direct or efficacious action on the Anglo-Saxons, who became daily more redoubtable, and whose ferocious incursions menaced not only the Caledonian clans, but also the Britons. Other missionaries were therefore needed. Whence were they to come? From that ever-burning centre of faith and charity from which the light of Christianity had already been brought to the Irish by Patrick; to the Bretons and Scots by Palladius, Ninian, and Germain—from Rome!

"Who then were the Anglo-Saxons, upon whom so many efforts were concentrated, and whose conquest is ranked, not without reason, among the most fruitful and most happy that the church has ever accomplished? Of all the Germanic tribes the most stubborn, intrepid, and independent, this people seem to have transplanted with themselves into the great island which owes to them its name, the genius of the Germanic race, in order that it might bear on this predestined soil its richest and most abundant fruits. The Saxons brought with them a language, a character, and institutions stamped with a strong and invincible originality. Language, character, institutions, have triumphed, in their essential features, over the vicissitudes of time and fortune—have outlived all ulterior conquests, as well as all foreign influences, and, plunging their vigorous roots into the primitive soil of Celtic Britain, still exist at the indestructible foundation of the social edifice of England.
...
Keeping intact and untamable their old Germanic spirit, their old morals, their stern independence, they gave from that moment to the free and proud genius of their race a vigorous upward impulse which nothing has been able to bear down." [Footnote 8]

[Footnote 8: Vol. iv. book xii. ch. 1.]

Every one knows how and by whom those Anglo-Saxons were evangelized and converted; every one knows the scene of Gregory, afterward pope, with the young slaves in the Roman forum, and the dialogue related by Bede from the traditions of his Northumbrian ancestors. Every one knows that, at the sight of those young slaves, struck by the beauty of their countenances, the dazzling whiteness of their complexion, the length of their flaxen locks, a probable sign of their aristocratic extraction, Gregory inquired about their country and their religion. The merchant, answered him that they came from the island of Britain, where all had the same fresh color, and that they were pagans. Then, heaving a deep sigh, "what evil luck," he exclaimed, "that the prince of darkness should possess beings with an aspect so radiant, and that the grace of these countenances should reflect a soul void of inward grace! But what nation are they of?" "They are Angles?" "They are well named, for these Angles have the faces of angels; and they must become the brethren of the angels in heaven. From what province have they been brought?" "From Deïra," (one of the two kingdoms of Northumbria.) "Still good," answered he. "De ira eruti—they shall be snatched from the ire of God, and called to the mercy of Christ. And how name they the king of their country?" "Alle or AElla." "So be it; he is right well named, for they shall soon sing the Alleluia in his kingdom." [Footnote 9]

[Footnote 9: Vol. iii book xii. ch. 1, p. 347.]

We will not follow the apostolate of the monk Augustine in his pacific conquests, nor the touching solicitude of the Pope St. Gregory for his dear favorites. Not because this history lacks interest—we know none more attractive, or in which the glory of the Roman Church shines forth more brilliantly—but it is better known than that of the monk Columba, which has delayed us longer. "We may simply remark that, unlike the churches of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, in all of which the baptism of blood had either preceded or accompanied the conversion of the inhabitants, in England there were neither martyrs nor persecutors from the first day of Augustine's preaching, during the entire existence of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Placed in the presence of the pure, resplendent light of Christianity, even before they understood or accepted it, those fierce Saxons, so pitiless to their enemies, displayed, in the presence of truth, a humanity and a docility which we seek in vain among the learned and civilized citizens of imperial Rome. Not a drop of blood spilled in the name of religion stained the English ground. And this prodigy is witnessed at a period when human gore flowed in torrents for any or every pretext, no matter how trivial. What a contrast between those times and later ages, when, in the very same island, so many pyres were lighted, so many gibbets raised on which to immolate the English who remained steadfast in the faith of Gregory and Augustine!"

The second volume of The Monks of the West comprises a thorough and varied account of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, not only by the missionaries sent from Rome, but also by those of England herself The great figure of St. Wilfrid looms up in this epoch. As we cannot analyze his noble and holy life, we will resume, at least, some of his traits, as drawn by the pen of M. de Montalembert.

"In Wilfrid began that great line of prelates, by turns apostolic and political, eloquent and warlike, brave champions of Roman unity and ecclesiastical independence, magnanimous representatives of the rights of conscience, the liberties of the soul, the spiritual powers of man, and the laws of God—a line to which history presents no equal out of the Catholic Church of England; a lineage of saints, heroes, confessors, and martyrs, which produced St. Dunstan, St. Lanfranc, St. Anselm, St. Thomas a Becket, Stephen Langton, St. Edmund, the exile of Pontigny, and which ended in Reginald Pole." [Footnote 10]
. . .

[Footnote 10: Vol. iv. ch. 4, p. 368.]

"In addition to all this, Wilfrid was the precursor of the great prelates, the great monks, the princely abbots of the middle ages, the heads and oracles of national councils, the ministers and lieutenants, and often the equals and rivals of kings. When duty called, no suffering alarmed, no privation deterred, and no danger stopped his course. Four times in his life he made the journey to Rome, then ten times more laborious and a hundred times more dangerous than the voyage to Australia is now. But, left to himself, he loved pomp, luxury, magnificence, and power. He could be humble and mild when it was necessary; but it was more congenial to him to confront kings, princes, nobles, bishops, councils, and lay assemblies in harsh and inflexible defence of his patrimony, his power, his authority, and his cause." [Footnote 11]
...

[Footnote 11: Ibidem, p. 369.]

"His influence is explained by the rare qualities, which more than redeemed all his faults. His was, before all else, a great soul, manly and resolute, ardent and enthusiastic, full of unconquerable energy, able to wait or to act, but incapable of discouragement or fear, born to live upon those heights which attract at once the thunderbolt and the eyes of the crowd. His eloquence, superior to anything yet known in England, his keen and penetrating intelligence, his eager zeal for literary studies and public education, his knowledge and love of those wonders of architecture which dazzled the Christian nation, and to which his voice attracted such crowds, his constancy in trial, his ardent love of justice—all contributed to make of him one of those personages who sway and move the spirits of their contemporaries, and who master the attention and imagination even of those whom they cannot convince. Something generous, ardent, and magnanimous in his nature commended him always to the sympathy of lofty hearts; and when adverse fortune and triumphant violence and ingratitude came in, to put upon his life the seal of adversity, nobly and piously borne, the rising tide of emotion and sympathy carried all before it, sweeping away all traces of those errors of conduct which might have seemed to us less attractive or comprehensible." [Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: Ibidem, pp. 371-2.]

The fifth and last volume ends with an elaborate essay of great interest on the Anglo-Saxon nunneries. It is certain that women have taken an active part in the civilization of modern nations, more particularly among the German tribes, whose purity of morals astonished the old Romans of the empire. The Germanic races considered woman as a person, not as a thing. No sooner was the light of the gospel received among them than their women began to distinguish themselves by the ardor of their faith and the generosity of their devotion. If monasteries cover the land, convents of women rival them in number, regularity, and religious fervor. It was the kings and nobles of the Heptarchy who first set the example of a cloistered life for men; it was also the queens and princesses who founded the first convents and became their earliest abbesses. Nothing is more interesting in the whole book, and nowhere is the author more successful, than in his portrayal of those primitive natures, still tinctured with barbarism, passing through a complete transformation under the law of light and charity; to see those nuns devote themselves to as earnest a study of Greek and Latin as to that of the Holy Scriptures; quote Virgil, compose verses during the intervals of their religious duties and the singing of the office. Another remarkable trait is their profound and obstinate attachment to one or other of the parties who disputed the possession of supreme power in those troubled times—an attachment which is explained by the high rank of the abbesses who governed those numerous communities. A single one of those houses, the Abbey of Winbourne, contained five hundred nuns who sang the office day and night. Nothing is better calculated to give us a just appreciation of the manners of those times than the faithful description of the interior life of those great convents; the narration of their customs, of their lively faith, their enthusiasm for science, of their works, their literary correspondence, and of all the details of their existence. Whatever may be the charm which the author has infused into the rest of his book, that part of it, in our opinion, which excites most the curiosity of the reader by the novelty of its incidents, its charming legends, and which will be read with most avidity, is the last chapter on the Anglo-Saxon nuns.

May this rapid sketch inspire our readers with the desire of becoming better acquainted with this great and magnificent work! In all ages, remarkable books have been scarce, and, by a sad infirmity of the human mind, they have not always been properly appreciated during the lifetime of their authors. Almost all have been obliged to await the judgment of time and posterity to consecrate their glory. Let this not be the fate of The Monks of the West. Let us read and study this book. We shall find in it the history of the conversion of England in the sixth and seventh centuries; one of the most powerful arguments in support of the great thesis—that the world has been civilized by the Catholic Church. This point is the high aim, the noble thought, the idea and soul of Montalembert's master-piece. By it he has rendered an immense service to the Catholic cause, and on this account he deserves the undying gratitude of all Christians.

O'Neill And O'Donnell In Exile. [Footnote 13]

[Footnote 13: The Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel: Their Flight from Ireland; Their Vicissitudes Abroad, and their Death in Exile. By the Rev. C. Meehan, M.R.I.A. Dublin: James Duffy. New York: Catholic Publication House. Pp. 383. 1868.]

The history of the Irish race presents certain features quite exceptional, and without parallel either in the ancient or in the modern world. For example, during these last two and a half centuries that strange history has been dual or double—half of it in Ireland and the other half in foreign lands. There were the Irish in Ireland undergoing the emaciating process of confiscations and plunder, writhing under their penal laws for religion, with occasional gallant efforts at resistance, either in support of a dynasty (the Stuarts) or by way of fierce insurrection, as in 1798. And there were the Irish abroad in many lands, refugees, exiles, emigrants, who were always plotting and preparing a descent from France or from Spain to redeem their countrymen from British oppression, or else giving their service as military adventurers to any power at war with England, hoping to deal their enemy somewhere, anywhere, a mortal blow. But their thought was ever Ireland, Ireland. What country on this earth has ever inspired its children with so deep, so passionate, so enduring love?

These side-scenes in the drama of Irish life have duly repeated themselves from generation to generation, down to the present day. We see one of them in the United States this moment. Always, alongside of the transactions in the island itself—the confiscations, and ejectments, and famines, and packed juries—there is a parallel series of transactions outside among the exiles, all bearing reference to the "fate and fortunes" of the Irish at home; all moved and inspired by that insatiable craving to liberate the land of their fathers, and make good their own footing among the green hills where they were born. Of this collateral or episodical history, Fr. Meehan has selected one of the most striking and touching scenes, has thoroughly investigated it in all its aspects, and in this volume presented us with a very complete monograph of the outside life of O'Neill and O'Donnell, with their followers, from the moment when those chiefs suddenly dropped out of the large space they had so long filled in Ireland proper, and became a part of the external Irish world.

For this task, Fr. Meehan had unusual qualifications and advantages. He had long lived in Rome, where the last years of the illustrious chiefs were passed, and where, in the Church of S. Pietro Montorio, their bones lie buried under a simple inscription. More than thirty years ago, the sight of this inscription (D.O.M. Hic quiescunt Ugonis Principis O'Neill ossa—"Here rest the bones of Hugh the Prince O'Neill") excited within his mind an ardent curiosity to explore the mystery which has so long surrounded that sad flight of the "earls," and their short, feverish life afterward. Since that day the author never lost sight of his object. Though devoted to his sacred duties, and occasionally occupied in illustrating some other page of the history of his country, as in his excellent narrative of the "Confederation of Kilkenny," (see Library of Ireland,) yet he was always adding to his store of materials for the illumination of this one dark passage in the fortunes of those most illustrious of Irish exiles. At length we have the result; and it leaves nothing to be desired. Yet we feel inclined at the outset to reproach the learned author for entitling his heroes Earl of Tyrone and Earl of Tyrconnel. Why has he done this when O'Neill's own epitaph has no allusion to such a title, which, indeed, was, in his eyes, a mark of disgrace and a badge of servitude? He had, it is true, submitted to sink for a short time formally from a high chief into an earl when he was in England, and had an object to gain by pleasing and flattering Queen Elizabeth; but in his own Ulster his name and title was The O'Neill; "in comparison of which," says Camden, "the very title of Caesar is contemptible in Ireland." [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: Camden: Queen Elizabeth.]

Moreover, it was not until his long and desperate resistance was at length subdued, not till most of his warriors lay dead amidst the smoking ruins of Ulster, and he had made his submission to Mountjoy at Mellifont Abbey, that he consented to wear with shame the coronet of an earl before his own clansmen and kinsmen. It was a condition of the queen's "pardon" that he should so abase himself. When he quitted Ireland, however, he flung down his coronet and golden chain, and never called himself Earl of Tyrone again. Fr. Meehan himself tells us (p. 161) while describing the honors paid to the chiefs upon the continent:

"Wherever there was an Irish seminary or conventual establishment, alumni and superiors vied with each other in congratulating the illustrious princes, for such was the designation by which they were recognized in Belgium, Italy, and all over the continent."

But on this subject it may be remarked that the policy of the British government in thus forcing the coronets of feudal nobility upon the unwilling brows of Celtic chieftains, whether in Scotland or in Ireland, has never yet been sufficiently understood. It was an essential part of the invariable British system of forcing its own form of social polity upon every part of the three kingdoms, as each part fell successively under English dominion. It was necessary, as Sir John Davies, Attorney-General for Ireland under James the First, declares, to abolish what he calls the "scambling possession" which Irish chiefs and clansmen had in their lands, and compel them to hold those lands by "English tenure;" in other words, that the chiefs should become landlords or proprietors of those districts which had formed the tribe-lands of their clans, and that their clansmen should become tenants subject to rent, which, in the seventeenth century, had grown to be a commutation for all feudal services. In short, the problem to be solved was to force in the already corrupt and oppressive feudal polity (which had long lost its true uses and significance) upon the free system of clanship, the ancient and natural social arrangement of the Irish and Scottish Gaël. Neither did that plan, of obliging chiefs to become noblemen—and therefore both vassals and landlords—originate with Elizabeth and James, nor with Sir John Davies. King Henry the Eighth, a century earlier, offered to Con O'Neill, the chief of that day, the dignity of earl, which Con accepted as a delicate attention from a foreign monarch, but took care to be a chief in Tyrone—no vassals, no tenants, no "English tenure" there. The O'Brien of Thomond, however, upon that earlier occasion, did lay down at King Henry's feet his dignity of Chief Dalcais, and arose Earl of Thomond; his son was made Baron of Inchiquin; and the MacGilla Phadruig consented to become "Fitzpatrick" and Baron of Upper Ossory. For their compliance, they were rewarded with the spoils of the suppressed monasteries of their respective countries—places which their own fathers had founded and endowed for pious uses.

The process in Scotland was nearly analogous, after the accession of James to the throne of England. The Mac Callum More (Campbell) was created Duke of Argyll, and invited to consider himself proprietor of all Argyllshire—by English tenure—and landlord of all the Campbells. Mac Kenzie was dubbed Earl of Cromarty on the same terms; and so with the rest: but at home those Highland nobles were never regarded as anything but chiefs; and it was only by very slow degrees, and not perfectly until after 1745, that the old clan spirit and usages disappeared. Thus, in forcing conformity with English land-laws, and gradually bringing the soil of the two islands into immediate dependence upon the English sovereign, every step in advance is marked by some chief submitting to be made earl or baron, and reducing his free kinsmen to serfdom. Those peerages, accordingly, are monuments of subjugation and badges of dishonor. Hugh O'Neill certainly did not value his title, flung it from him with impatience, quitted earldom and country to get rid of it, and protested against it on his tombstone. For these reasons, many readers of Fr. Meehan's book will wish that the author had given to his heroes the titles by which they themselves desired to be remembered.

Having thus vented our only censure, upon a matter rather technical and formal, the more agreeable task remains, of making our readers acquainted with all the merits and perfections of this charming book. Fr. Meehan does not undertake to narrate the earlier life and long and bloody wars against the best generals of England, but takes up the story where the chief was desperately maintaining himself, and still keeping his Red Hand aloft in the woody fastness of Glanconkeine, on the side of Slieve Gallen, and by the banks of Moyola water, awaiting the return from Spain of his brother-chief, Hugh Roe O'Donnell, with the promised succors from King Philip. But in those very same days, that famous Hugh Roe had lain down to die in Spain, and succor came none to the sorely pressed Prince of Ulster. His great enemy, Elizabeth, too, was on her death-bed, almost ready to breathe her last curse. But in her agonies she by no means forgot O'Neill. Father Meehan says:

"It is a curious and perhaps suggestive fact, that Queen Elizabeth, while gasping on her cushions at Richmond, and tortured by remembrances of her latest victim, Essex, often directed her thoughts to that Ulster fastness, where her great rebel, Tyrone, was still defying her, and disputing her title to supremacy on Irish soil. But of this, however, there can be no doubt; for in February, while she was gazing on the haggard features of death, and vainly striving to penetrate the opaque void of the future, she commanded Secretary Cecil to charge Mountjoy to entrap Tyrone into a submission on diminished title, such as Baron of Dungannon, and with lessened territory, or, if possible, to have his head before engaging the royal word. It was to accomplish any of these objects that Mountjoy marched to the frontier of the north; but finding it impossible to procure the assassination of 'the sacred person of O'Neill, who had so many eyes of jealousy about him,' he wrote to Cecil, from Drogheda, that nothing prevented Tyrone from making his submission but mistrust of his personal safety, and guarantee for maintenance commensurate to his princely rank. The granting of these conditions, Mountjoy concluded, would bring about the pacification of Ireland, and Tyrone, being converted into a good subject, would rid her majesty of the apprehension of another Spanish landing on the Irish shore. It is possible that this proposed solution of the Irish difficulty may have reached Richmond at a moment when Elizabeth was more intent on the talisman sent her by the old Welsh woman, or the arcane virtues of the card fastened to the seat of her chair, than on matters of statecraft; but be that as it may, the lords of her privy council empowered Mountjoy to treat with Tyrone, and bring about his submission with the least possible delay."

The author next carries us through the imposing scene of the chief's submission and surrender at Mellifont Abbey, and gives a vivid account of that illustrious religious house, and the lovely vale of the Mattock in which it stands; of his gloomy resignation to his hated earldom; of the organization of Ulster into shires or counties, (never before heard of in those parts;) of the new "earl's" journey to London, along with Rory O'Donnell, the other "earl," and Lord Mountjoy, with a guard of horse:

"Nor was this precaution unnecessary; for whenever the latter was recognized, in city or hamlet, the populace, notwithstanding their respect for Mountjoy, the hero of the hour, could not be restrained from stoning Tyrone, and flinging bitter insults at him. Indeed, throughout the whole journey, the Welsh and English women were unsparing of their invectives against the Irish chief. Nor are we to wonder at this; for there was not one among them but could name some friend or kinsman whose bones lay buried far away in some wild pass or glen of Ulster, where the object of their maledictions was more often victor than vanquished."

The new king, James the First, was very desirous to see O'Neill, who had, after his victory at the Yellow Ford, sent an ambassador to James at Holyrood, offering, if supplied with some money and munitions, to march upon Dublin, and proclaim him King of Ireland; but the Scottish king had been too timid to close with this offer. One may imagine with what mingled feelings O'Neill once more revisited that London, and Greenwich Palace, where in his younger days he had been a favored courtier, had talked on affairs of state with Burleigh, and disported himself with Sir Christopher Hatton, "the dancing chancellor." The author describes his reception at court:

"Nothing, indeed, could have been more gracious than the reception which the king gave those distinguished Irishmen; and so marked was the royal courtesy to both, that it stirred the bile of Sir John Harington, who speaks of it thus: 'I have lived to see that damnable rebel, Tyrone, brought to England honored and well-liked. 'Oh! what is there that does not prove the inconstancy of worldly matters? How I did labor after that knave's destruction! I adventured perils by sea and land, was near starving, eat horse-flesh in Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did hazard their lives to destroy him. And now doth Tyrone dare us, old commanders, with his presence and protection!'"

Returning to Ireland, "restored in blood," O'Neill lived as he best could, in his new and strange character of an earl, infested by spies upon all his movements. "Notice is taken," says Attorney-General Davies, "of every person that is able to do either good or hurt. It is known not only how they live and what they do, but it is foreseen what they purpose or intend to do; insomuch, as Tyrone has been heard to complain that he had so many eyes over him, that he could not drink a full carouse of sack, but the state was advertised thereof a few hours thereafter." [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: Sir John Davies's Historical Tracts.]

The author has taken great pains to ascertain the real nature of those dark intrigues against O'Neill and O'Donnell, which resulted four or five years after in the timely escape of those two "earls" from the toils of their enemies—the only measure that could save them from the fate of Sir William Wallace and of Shane O'Neill. O'Neill found himself embroiled in endless law-suits; with Montgomery, Bishop of Derry; with Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, who each claimed a large slice of his estates; with the traitor O'Cahan, his own former Uriaght, or sub-chief, who entered into the conspiracy against him, seduced by the promises of Montgomery and the Lord-Deputy Chichester. The truth was, that the "undertaking" English of the north coveted his wide domains, and could not comprehend how a rebellious O'Neill could possibly be allowed to possess broad lands in fee, which they wanted for themselves. Fr. Meehan has cast more light upon these wicked machinations than any previous writer had the means and authorities for; and it now appears plain that the chief agent of these base plots was Christopher St. Laurence, the twenty-second baron of Howth, and one of the ancestors of the noble house of that title, now gloriously flourishing amongst the Irish nobility. Fr. Meehan's researches have brought home to this noble caitiff the famous anonymous letter dropped in the Castle-Yard of Dublin, and also a detailed deposition, shamelessly setting forth his own long-continued espionage, and on the faith of conversations with several persons, charging Tyrone, Lord Mountgarrett, Sir Theobald Burke, and others, with a plot to bring in the Spaniards, and to take by surprise the Castle of Dublin. O'Neill knew nothing, at the time, of the conspiracy against him; but had a very shrewd suspicion that the Lord-Deputy Chichester and the northern Anglican bishops were resolved to have his blood, in order to get his estate confiscated. One of the McGuires, who was himself in danger from these machinations, escaped to the continent. The author says:

"Meanwhile, Cuconnaught Maguire, growing weary of his impoverished condition, and longing to be rid of vexations he could no longer bear, contrived, about the middle of May, 1607, to make his escape from one of the northern ports to Ostend, whence he lost no time in proceeding to Brussels, where Lord Henry O'Neill was then quartered with his Irish regiment. The latter presented him at the court of the archdukes, who received him kindly, and evinced deep sympathy for their Irish coreligionists, and especially the northern earls, with whose wrongs they were thoroughly conversant, through Florence Conry, fathers Cusack and Stanihurst. Father Conry, it would appear, informed Maguire that King James would certainly arrest Tyrone, if he went to London; and Maguire, on hearing this, despatched a trusty messenger to the earls to put them on their guard, and then set about providing means for carrying them off the Irish shores. The influence of Lord Henry with the archdukes procured him a donation of 7000 crowns, [Footnote 16] with which he purchased, at Rouen, a vessel of fourscore tons, mounting sixteen cast pieces of ordnance, manned by marines in disguise, and freighted with a cargo of salt. From Rouen the vessel proceeded to Dunkirk, under command of one John Bath, a merchant of Drogheda, and lay there, waiting instructions from Ireland."

[Footnote 16: The archdukes were greatly indebted to O'Neill, who gave ample employment to the queen's troops in Ireland during the war in the Netherlands, and thus prevented the English from aiding, as they wished, the revolted provinces.]

This Bath, on his arrival in Ireland, at once sought both O'Neill and O'Donnell, and informed them, on sure information procured by Lord Henry O'Neill, Hugh's son, that they would both be certainly arrested, and at the same time placed at their service McGuire's ship, which he commanded. It needed great tact and coolness on the part of O'Neill to conceal from the Lord-Deputy his intention of departure. But at last—

"At midnight, on that ever-memorable 14th of September, 1607, they spread all sail, and made for the open sea, intending, however, to land on the island of Aran, off the coast of Donegal, to provide themselves with more water and fuel.

"Those who were now sailing away from their ancient patrimonies were, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, with his countess, Catharina, and their three sons, Hugh, John, and Bernard. With them also went Art Oge, 'young Arthur,' son of Cormac, Tyrone's brother; Fadorcha, son of Con, the earl's nephew; Hugh Oge, son of Brian, brother of Tyrone, and many more of their faithful clansmen. Those accompanying Earl Rory were Cathbar, or Caffar, his brother; Nuala, his sister, wife of the traitor, Nial Garve; Hugh, the earl's son, wanting three weeks of being one year old; Rosa, daughter of Sir John O'Doherty, sister of Sir Cahir, and wife of Cathbar, with her son, Hugh, aged two years and three months; the son of his brother, Donel Oge; Naghtan, son of Calvagh, or Charles O'Donel, with many others of their trusted friends and followers. 'A distinguished crew,' observe the four masters, 'was this for one ship; for it is certain that the sea never carried, and that the winds never wafted, from the Irish shores, individuals more illustrious or noble in genealogy, or more renowned for deeds of valor, prowess, and high achievements.' Ah! with what tearful eyes and torn hearts did they gaze on the fast receding shores, from which they were forced to fly for the sake of all they held dearest! 'The entire number of souls on board this small vessel,' says O'Keenan, in his narrative, 'was ninety-nine, having little sea-store, and being otherwise miserably accommodated.' It was, indeed, the first great exodus of the Irish nobles and gentry, to be followed, alas! by many another, caused, in great measure, by a similar system of cruel and exceptional legislation."

There is a most interesting account of their stormy voyage in that small vessel; but after much hardship and danger, they made the port of Havre, and went up the River Seine to the ancient city of Rouen. The English ambassador at the court of Henry the Fourth of France, had the assurance to demand of the French government to arrest the refugees, but received a short answer: "Writing to Lord Shrewsbury, October 12th, 1607, Salisbury alludes to O'Neill's voyage thus: 'He was shrewdly tossed at sea, and met contrary winds for Spain. The English ambassador wishing Henry to stay them, had for his answer, France is free.'" (P. 123.)

From Normandy the party proceeded to Flanders, where they were received by the archdukes with the highest distinction ever shown to sovereign princes and their suite. At Brussels O'Neill met his son, the Lord Henry, then commanding a regiment of Irish for the archdukes, and also another young O'Neill, destined to do great things in his generation, namely, Hugh's nephew, Owen Roe. Our author thus introduces him:

"Even at the risk of interrupting O'Keenan's narrative, we may observe that none of these Irish exiles could have foreseen that a little boy, with auburn ringlets, then in their company, would one day win renown by defending that same city of Arras against two of the ablest marshals of France. Nevertheless, such was the case; for, thirty-three years afterward, Owen Roe O'Neill, son of Art, and nephew to the Earl of Tyrone, with his regiment of Irish, maintained the place against Chatillon and Meillarie, till he had to make a most honorable capitulation." [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: August, 1640. See Hericourt's Sieges d'Arras.]

And the same Owen Roe, still later, in the Irish wars of King Charles's day, fought and won the bloody battle of Benburb against the Scottish Presbyterian army, and trampled their blue banner on the banks of that same Blackwater which had seen the glorious victories of the Red Hand. From Brussels the fugitives had an intention of proceeding to Spain, but were diverted from that purpose by the archdukes, and they finally set out for Rome. The narrative of their journey across the Alps is exceedingly interesting; and on their arrival at Milan, they were welcomed with high honors by the Spanish governor, the Conde de Fuentes, and by the nobility of the province; but it need hardly be said that, in all their movements, they were closely watched by British spies; and every attention shown to them was the subject of violent remonstrance on the part of English ambassadors. Father Meehan gives us the letter of Lord Cornwallis, then ambassador at Madrid, to the lords of the privy council, expressing his loyal disgust at the splendid hospitalities of the Governor of Milan:

"'To the lords of the privy council.

"'Having lately gathered, amongst the Irish here, that the fugitive earls have been in Milan, and there much feasted by the Conde de Fuentes, I expostulated it with the secretary of state, who answered that they had not yet had any understanding of their being there; that the Conde de Fuentes was not a man disposed to such largess as to entertain strangers in any costly manner at his own charge; and that sure he was he could not expect any allowance from hence where there was intended no receipt, countenance, or comfort to any of that condition. I sent sithence by Cottington, my secretary, concerning one Mack Ogg, lately come hither, as I have been advised, to solicit for these people; which was, that as I hoped they would have no participation with the principals, whose crimes had now been made so notorious in their own countries, being both, upon public trial, condemned, and he of Tyrone, as I heard, of thirteen several murders; so I likewise assured myself that, in their own wisdoms, they would not hold it fit his majesty here should give harbor or ear to any of their ministers, and especially to that of Mack Ogg, who could not be supposed but to have had a hand in their traitorous purposes; having been the man and the means, in person, to withdraw them by sea out of their own countries, in such undutiful and suspicious manner. That myself was, in a matter of that nature, solicitous only in regard of my own earnest desire that nothing might escape this state whereby their intentions might be held different from their professions. That for these fugitives, being now out of their retreats, weak in purse, and people condemned and contemned by those of their own nation, and such as could not but daily expect the heavy hand of God's justice for their so many unnatural and detestable crimes, both of late and heretofore committed, for my own particular I made no more account of them than of so many fleas; neither did the king, my master, otherwise esteem them than as men reprobated both of God and the world, for their fa??norous actions toward others, and inexcusable ingratitude to himself."

[Transcriber's Note: The word "fa??norous" is illegible.]

The author gives a minute and graphic narrative of the journey of the "earls" through Italy, and their entrance into the Eternal City, where they were affectionately received by Pope Paul V., who assigned them a palace for their dwelling:

"The time at which the Irish princes entered Rome was one of more than usual festivity; for, on the Thursday preceding Trinity Sunday, the pope solemnly canonized Sa Francesca Romana, in the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican. Rome was then crowded by distinguished strangers from all parts of the known world, each vieing with the other to secure fitting places to witness the grand ceremonial. But of them all, none were so honored as O'Neill, O'Donel, their ladies and followers; for the pope gave orders that tribunes, especially reserved for them, should be erected right under the dome. This, indeed, was a signal mark of his Holiness's respect for his guests, greater than which he could not exhibit. Among the spectators were many English; and we can readily conceive how much they were piqued at seeing O'Neill [Footnote 18] and the earl thus honored by the supreme head of the church."

[Footnote 18: Throughout his narrative, O'Keenan styles O'Neill according to his Gaelic title, and calls O'Donel the earl. O'Keenan was not sufficiently anglicized in accent or otherwise to respect the law which forbade the assumption of the old Irish designation peculiar to the Prince of Tyrone.]

And now began the long series of negotiations with the King of Spain and the other Catholic powers, which were to enable the "earls" to make a descent upon Ireland, reconquer their heritage, and liberate their unfortunate people from the bondage and oppression they were now enduring at the hands of King James's "undertaking" planters. O'Neill had written a formal diplomatic letter to King James, recounting the various plots and treasons which had been practised against him by His Majesty's servants in Ireland, demanding back his ancient inheritance, and announcing that, in default of compliance, he would hold himself at liberty to go back to Ireland, with a sufficient force to free his country. This ultimatum took no effect. The pope and the King of Spain, though they treated him with high respect, and awarded him a handsome pension, were slow to give the material aid that was needed; and in the year 1608, his comrade Rory (Rudraigh): O'Donnell, called Earl of Tyrconnell, died. Says Father Meehan:

"During his illness he was piously tended by Rosa, daughter of O'Dogherty, his brother's wife, the Princess O'Neill, and Florence Conry, who had performed the same kind offices for Hugh Roe O'Donel in Simancas. On the 27th July, 1608, he received the last sacraments, and on the morning following surrendered his soul to God. 'Sorrowful it was,' say the Donegal, annalists, 'to contemplate his early eclipse, for he was a generous and hospitable lord, to whom the patrimony of his ancestors seemed nothing for his feasting and spending.'"

Soon after died O'Neill's son Hugh, whom the English called Baron of Dungannon. O'Donnell's brother Caffar (Cathbar) died about the same time, and the old chieftain was now left nearly alone to carry on his almost hopeless negotiations. The Irish exiles in Spain, when they heard of the death of the two O'Donnells and young O'Neill, wore mourning publicly, to the utter disgust of Lord Cornwallis, the English ambassador. He remonstrated with the King of Spain against suffering so indecent an exhibition, but received no satisfaction in that quarter; and he wrote thereon, says Father Meehan:

"'The agent of the Irish fugitives in this city has presumed to walk its streets, followed by two pages, and four others of his countrymen, in black weeds—a sign that they are no unwelcome guests here.' This was bad enough; but the news he supplied in another letter was still worse, for he says: 'The Spanish court had become the staple of the fugitive ware, since it allows Tyrone a pension of six hundred crowns a month; Tyrconnel's brother's widow, one of two hundred crowns a month; and his brother's wife, one of the same sum.'"

If the British government could only have got hold of those mourners in their "black weeds," within its own jurisdiction, they would undoubtedly have been prosecuted and punished, like the men who lately attended a funeral in Dublin. Nothing can be more provoking to a government, sometimes, than public mourning for its victims. Indeed, the Russian authorities in Warsaw have been several times so exasperated by the sight of the citizens all clothed in black, mourning for a crowd of innocent people, cut down and ridden over by the cavalry in the streets, as to feel compelled to issue instructions to the police to drag every vestige of black apparel from every man, and every woman, and child in the public thoroughfares, and to close up every shop or store which should dare to keep any black fabric for sale. But in cases where this kind of provocation is perpetrated in some foreign country, and under the protection of its laws, then your insulted government must only bear the affront as it best can.

The author next proceeds, with the aid of letters in the State Paper Office, to narrate the various projects and speculations of O'Neill and his friends, with a view to the invasion of their native country; with all which projects and speculations the British government was made fully acquainted by means of its spies and diplomatic agents. England and Spain were just then at peace, and one main hope of the exiles was that a breach might take place between them. Our author says:

"Withal, it would appear that England had not then a very firm reliance on the good faith of Spain. Indeed, Turnbull's despatches show this to have been the case; and as for O'Neill, there is every reason to suppose that he calculated on some such lucky rupture, and that Philip would then have an opportunity of retrieving the disaster of Kinsale, by sending a flotilla to the coast of Ulster, where the native population would rally to the standard of their attainted chieftain, and drive the new settlers back to England or Scotland—anywhere from off the face of his ancient patrimony. Yielding to these apprehensions, James instructed his minister at the court of the archdukes to redouble his vigilance, and make frequent reports of the movements of the Irish troops in their Highnesses' pay, and, above all, to certify to him the names of the Irish officers on whom the court of Spain bestowed special marks of its consideration. In fact, from the middle of 1614 till the close of the following year, Turnbull's correspondence is wholly devoted to these points, so much so, that the English cabinet had not only intelligence of Tyrone's designs, but ample information concerning all those who were suspected of countenancing them. Nothing could surpass the minister's susceptibility on this subject; for if we were to believe himself, no Catholic functionary visited the court of Brussels without impressing on their Highnesses the expediency, as well as duty, of aiding the banished earl and his coreligionists in Ireland."

At last, in January, 1615, O'Neill resolved to undertake the enterprise himself, some Catholic noblemen in Italy and Belgium engaging to furnish him with funds. He was to quit Rome by a certain day; but, like all his other projects, this was speedily communicated to Trumbull, who lost no time in making it known to the English cabinet. He did not leave Rome as he intended; but two months later:

"The Belgian agent sent another dispatch to the king, informing him 'that O'Neill hath sent from Rome two of his instruments into Ireland, called Crone and Conor, with order to stir up factions and seditions in that kingdom, where, in Waterford alone, there are no less than thirty-six Jesuits.'"

Next we find the same vigilant English minister apprising his government that O'Neill was about "to have some of his countrymen employed at sea in ships of war, as pirates, with commission to take all vessels," etc. In truth, it was for England a genuine "Fenian" alarm, this constantly menacing attitude of the veteran warrior of the Blackwater; a "Fenian" alarm, alas! of two hundred and fifty years ago. And how many there have been since! There was also the same eager impatience for action, the same maddening thought that the work must be done at once or Ireland was lost for ever. A certain physician, who attended O'Neill in this year, 1615, writes to a friend in London, giving him, as a sample of his patient's conversation and manner, the following anecdote:

"Though a man would think that he is an old man by sight—no, he is lusty and strong, and well able to travel; for a month ago, at evening, when his frere [Footnote 19] and his gentlemen were all with him, they were talking of England and Ireland, and he drew out his sword. 'His majesty,' said he, 'thinks that I am not strong. I would he that hates me most in England were with me to see whether I am strong or no.' Those that were by said, 'We would we were with forty thousand pounds of money in Ireland, to see what we should do.' Whereon Tyrone remarked, 'If I be not in Ireland within these two years, I will never desire more to look for it.'"

[Footnote 19: F. Chamberlaine, O.S.F.]

So thought Sarsfield when he fled with the "Wild-geese" almost a century later—if they could not return with a reenforcement of French within one year, within two years, there was an end of Ireland. So thought Wolfe Tone, after still another century, as he was gnawing his own heart in Paris at the fatal delay, and crying, "Hell! hell! If that expedition did not sail at that moment, Ireland was subdued and lost for ever and ever." It is natural that the eager spirits of each generation of Irishmen should be in haste to see the great work done in their own day. But divine Providence is in no haste, and will not be hurried. Beyond all doubt, there is a destiny and a work in store for this Irish race, so wonderfully preserved through sore trials, and in spite of repeated persistent efforts to extirpate it utterly. It has a strong hold upon life, and a potent individual character. It will neither perish from the face of the earth nor forget a single tradition or aspiration, nor part with its ancient religious faith. It not only does not attorn to the dominant English sentiment and character, but seems, on the contrary, to become more antagonistic, and to cherish that antagonism.

And it is very notable that this desperate mutual repulsion between England and Ireland does not date from the "Reformation," nor does it altogether depend upon religious differences. It is true that the acceptance of the new religion by England and its rejection by the Irish furnished the former with a new pretext and a convenient machinery for oppression and plunder. But two centuries before this, Hugh O'Neill's time—and when the English were as Catholic as the Irish—we find his ancestor, Donal O'Neill, in his famous letter to Pope John XXII., describing the relations of the two races in language which is still appropriate at this day: "All hope of peace between us is completely destroyed; for such is their pride, such is their excessive lust of dominion, such our ardent desire to shake off this insupportable yoke, and recover the inheritance which they have so unjustly usurped, that as there never was, so there never will be, any sincere coalition between them and us; nor is it possible there should in this life; for we entertain a certain natural enmity against each other, flowing from mutual malignity, descending by inheritance from father to son, and spreading from generation to generation."

The aged Prince of Ulster never saw his native land again. In the following year, 1616, he became blind and, some weeks after, having received the last rites of the church, he died at the Salviati palace at Rome.

His history from first to last is a striking and remarkable one. In the "religious" wars of the period, he was a conspicuous figure; and Henry the Fourth of France called him the third soldier of his age—he, Henry, being the first. But English historians of the past and present century have made it a rule to say nothing of him and of his great battles. They seem to desire that the name of the Yellow Ford should be blotted out of history. But once upon a time O'Neill occupied some attention in England. Spenser and Bacon wrote anxious treatises to suggest the best method of crushing him. Shakespeare delighted his audience at the "Globe" theatre by triumphant anticipations of the return of Lord Essex after destroying the abhorred O'Neill—

"Were now the general of our gracious empress (As, in good time, he may) from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword. How many would the peaceful city quit. To welcome him?"

Camden, in his Queen Elizabeth, has given to the Irish war at least its due rank in the events of the time; and Fynes Moryson tells us that "the general voyce was of Tyrone amongst the English after the defeat of Blackwater, as of Hannibal among the Romans after the defeat of Cannae." Mr. Hume, though he tells us nothing of O'Neill's splendid victories over the English, yet incidentally mentions that "in the year 1599 the queen spent six hundred thousand pounds in six months in the service of Ireland; and Sir Robert Cecil affirmed that in ten years Ireland cost her three million four hundred thousand pounds," which would be about sixty millions of pounds sterling in money of the present day. So well, however, has the memory of all this been suppressed, that even an educated Englishman at this time, if you mentioned to him the great battle of the Yellow Ford would not at all understand to what event you were alluding; so that one is not at all astonished to find that Mr. Motley, in his voluminous book expressly devoted to the religious wars of Europe in those days, and especially the reign of Elizabeth, not only ignores that transaction altogether, but does not so much as know O'Neill's name. When he does once undertake to name him, he calls him not Hugh O'Neill, but "Shanes MacNeil." (History of United Netherlands, vol. iv. p. 94.)

The Irish, however, still cherish his name and keep his memory green. The peasantry yet tell that strange legend of a troop of the great chiefs lancers all lying in tranced sleep in a cave under the royal hill of Aileagh, each holding his horse's bridle in his hand, and waiting for the spell to be removed that will set them free to strike a blow for their country; and when a man once penetrated into the cave, and saw the sleepers in their ancient mail, one of them lifted his head and asked. Is the time come? To the educated and reflective Irish, also, that cardinal epoch of Irish history, in which O'Neill was the chief figure, has of late become a subject of more zealous study than it ever was before; and these will heartily thank the accomplished author of the present work for the clear light he has thrown upon one strange and painful episode in his country's annals.

The Cross.

In all ages, and among all nations, important events have been commemorated and transmitted to future generations by significant symbols. These mute symbols have served to represent the great leading ideas and characteristics of nations, communities, societies, and schools of religion, philosophy, morals, and politics. Entire histories have been treasured up for ages in these simple and inanimate emblems. In thousands of instances they have served to call to mind the stirring events of a generation, the glories of a great nation, epochs in human progress, or the rise and fall of false religions, false philosophies, and false systems of all descriptions. Each symbol comprises a language and a history of its own, which can be comprehended at a glance by the most ignorant of those whom it addresses. As the ideas which they represent pertain, for the most part, to affairs of the highest magnitude, they have always been regarded with respect and veneration.

When the legions of the Caesars were achieving the conquest of a world, their emblem of nationality and glory, and their inspiration in battle, was the Roman flag emblazoned with the Roman eagles. In the midst of the fiercest contests, a simple glance at the national symbol would fire the heart of the soldier with patrotic ardor, and often turn the tide of battle in his favor. As he looked upon his flag, the Roman soldier beheld the greatness and glory of his country, with himself as a constituent element of all this greatness, and his heart and hand were nerved with Herculean strength to meet the foe. In the eagles which floated amid the din of battle, he read the history of the empire, with her conquests, her riches, her power, her grandeur, and her Caesar; and he cheerfully gave his life for the ideas thus evoked.

The Saracen, as he marched out to battle, beheld the crescent of his prophet, and was willing to die for his cause. As the crescent waves before him, his imagination pictures the prophet beckoning him on to battle, to conquest, to proselytism, and to the sensual joys of paradise, and his courage rises, his blood boils, and his cimeter leaps from its scabbard. No danger, no fatigue, no privation daunts or deters him so long as he beholds the emblem of his religion and his race. He loves and venerates the silent symbol for the associations it calls to mind.

Napoleon I., with his battalions, traversed the continent of Europe, dictating terms to kings and emperors; and finally marshalled his victorious forces around the pyramids of Egypt. During this triumphal march, his most potent auxiliaries were the eagles of France draped in their tri-colored plumage. At the bridge of Lodi, when the French hosts shrank back appalled from the carnage caused by the terrific fire of the Austrian, Napoleon raised aloft the emblem of France before the eyes of his panic-stricken veterans. In an instant every heart was nerved, and amidst storms of balls and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the bridge was carried and the day was won. The eagles of the first Caesars seemed to have alighted upon the tri-colored flags of the modern Caesar. Whether in the midst of the deadly snows of Russia, or of the burning sands of Egypt, or of the towering summits of the Alps, the great talisman which led the way and gave inspiration to the soldier, was the national symbol. It spoke to them of home, of kindred, friends, and of the glory of France; and they were willing to risk all for the ideas thus inspired.

How often has the tide of battle been turned in favor of England, both on land and sea, by raising the symbol of England, and the war-cry of St. George and the Dragon, in the thickest of the fight! How often, in the midst of battle and slaughter, has the drooping spirit of the Celt been roused to fierce enthusiasm and determination by a sight of his loved national emblem, the shamrock!

What true American can regard his own national symbol without emotion, love, and veneration! Whether he beholds it unfurled upon the battle-field, upon the ocean, or in a foreign land, he reads in every star and every stripe a history of his native land—of her struggles, her glories, and her future destiny. Under its shadow the soldier is a braver man, the statesman a better patriot, the citizen a truer loyalist, and the American traveller in foreign lands more proud of his nationality.

We might cite instances ad infinitum; but we have adduced a sufficient number for illustration. What is the signification and the utility of these symbols? At the birth of nations, it has always been the custom to devise some common symbol around which the people could rally as a type of nationality. On all important occasions, both in peace and in war, this common emblem is always in the midst of the people, to remind them of the past, to inspire them in the present, and to render them hopeful in the future. It is associated with all their public events, their victories, their defeats, their joys, their sorrows, their glories, their progress, their power and greatness. Is it, then, strange that it should be regarded with love, respect, and veneration? Is it strange that a sight of their mute talisman in the midst of battle should stir the soul of the soldier to its very depths, or that the heart of the patriot should swell with emotion and stern resolve when the honor or welfare of his country is in danger, or that the citizen should have a higher appreciation of the dignity and destiny of man, or that the individual should always associate it with his love of country, his pride of the past, his aspirations of the present, his hopes of the future, in a word, with his nationality? The man who has no love of father-land in his soul, who does not love and respect the emblem of his country's glory, is fit only for stratagems, conspiracies, and bloody tumults and disorders. Such a man can only be regarded as an enemy of his race; and will be frowned upon by the wise, the good, and the humane.

The emblems we have thus far alluded to refer to the worldly affairs of men, to matters of state, of government, and national prosperity. We now propose to refer briefly to the highest of all symbols—the symbol of symbols—the emblem of emblems—to one which relates to the temporal and eternal welfare of the entire human race, the holy cross. What is its signification and utility? What associations does it call to mind? It tells us of the Incarnate God sent to earth to give mankind a new law, to set them an example of a perfect life, to teach them those higher virtues and graces which fit them for happiness here and hereafter, and then to suffer and to die an ignominious death to atone for the sins of man. It calls up all the dread circumstances connected with the last days of our blessed Saviour when on earth. It brings to mind his betrayal by Judas, his arraignment before Pontius Pilate, his condemnation, his march to the place of execution with the cross upon his blessed shoulders, amidst the insults, the scoffs, the scourgings, the crowning with thorns, and other indignities of a Jewish and pagan rabble. It presents before us his ascent to the scaffold, his bloody transfixion between two thieves, his dreadful agony, his bloody sweat, his wounds, his slow and agonizing death. For whom, and for what, has the omnipotent Redeemer suffered these ignominies, these agonies, this cruel death? For all mankind, as an atonement of their sins. With his almighty power he could have summoned around him legions of destroying angels, who could have crushed to powder his persecutors; or with his mighty breath he could have consigned them to instant annihilation. But his love and tenderness for man was infinite; and he mercifully refrained from employing the power which he possessed to their injury. How vast this condescension, this love, this devotion to mortals under such provocations!

Since the date of the crucifixion, the cross, with the image of our blessed Lord attached thereto, has been universally recognized as the chief symbol of Christianity. In the days of the apostles and their immediate successors it was their ever-present memento, friend, solace, badge, and emblem of faith. Recent discoveries in the catacombs of Rome have brought to light the rude altars of the first Christians, always stamped with and designated by the sign of the cross. When these early Christians were hunted down like wild beasts, and driven by the sanguinary pagans into the most secret recesses of the earth to escape martyrdom, the holy cross ever accompanied them, ever symbolized their faith, ever served as a beacon of light, and a rallying-point for the persecuted followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

Whenever the missionaries of the church have abandoned country and friends, taken their lives in their hands, and penetrated into the remotest wilds of the savage, in order to "preach the Gospel to every creature," the holy cross, with its divine associations, has always led the way, beckoning them on in their great life-work of love, mercy, and Christianity. Often have these devoted men met the martyr's fate; but they have died in holy triumph, with smiles and prayers on their lips, with their eyes fixed on the sacred cross, and their souls on heaven. If a nation's flag has been able to stir the soul of the soldier to deeds of noble daring amid the excitement of battle, the cross of Christ has been able, not less often, to fire the soul of the lone missionary with holy love and zeal in the midst of the savage wilderness. If, with flag in hand, the soldier has rushed to the cannon's mouth, and laid down his life to win a battle, no less frequently has the missionary, holding aloft the sacred cross, rushed to the desert places of the earth, where barbarism, pestilence, famine, cruelties, sufferings, and danger of martyrdom encompass him on every side. The soldier fights his battles under the eyes of his countrymen, cheered on by applauding comrades, by martial music, and by hopes of speedy preferment; but the Christian missionary fights alone, surrounded by wild foes, far from home and friends, with no hope of temporal reward, and where, if he is killed or dies a natural death, he may be devoured by wild beasts, or remain uncoffined, unburied, and unrecognized.

Statesmen, philosophers, warriors, and citizens of all ranks love and respect their national symbols because they call to mind the events and circumstances connected with their nationalities. These sentiments are commended by the whole world. The true Christian also loves and respects the symbol which calls up before him the facts and incidents connected with the passion and crucifixion of the Saviour. Let no one delude himself with the absurd idea that it is the material of the flag, or of the cross, which calls forth these powerful emotions, and these high resolutions. Let no one suppose that idolatry can spring from the contemplation and reverence of objects which place before the mind's eye in the form of symbols the important events of a nation, or the sufferings and death of a God. Let no one question the motives or the propriety of his fellow man who bows down in tears, in love, in gratitude and devotion before the recognized emblems and mementos of great nations, and of godlike achievements.

The cross of Christ! How vast and solemn the associations connected with it! How significant its mute appeals to the hearts of mortals! How eloquent its reference to a Redeemer's love for sinful man! How glorious its history, and how prolific of heavenly aspirations!

The cross of Christ! How beautiful, how sublime, how soul-inspiring the ideas which encompass thee as with a halo of light and glory! In ages past and gone, in all the lands of earth, as it has silently ministered to the souls and thoughts of men, and carried them back to Calvary, what an infinity of blessings it has conferred! As we gaze at the Lamb of God, nailed to the cross, how sad and tender the memories which pass before the mind! Every wound of the precious body, every expression of the godlike features, calls up some act of divine love and mercy! Silently, sadly, solemnly, the holy cross has borne its sacred burden to all nations, through long ages of culture and light, of darkness and ignorance, of civilization and barbarism—a pioneer and potent agent in all good works—a talisman and solace for the poor and oppressed, as well as for the rich and powerful, a beacon of heavenly light, and a rallying-point for all Christendom!

In the dark ages, when Christianity and barbarism struggled for the mastery of Europe, the latter achieved a physical triumph; but spiritually the cross of Christ prevailed, and the barbarian conquerors became Christian converts. When nations, communities, or individuals have been bowed down with calamities and sorrows, rays of hope and comfort have always shone from the holy cross. However poor, unfortunate, wicked, degraded, and despised an individual may be, the cross of Christ still beams upon him with compassion and mercy.

Languages may be oral or printed, or pictorial or symbolical. By the two first, ideas are conveyed seriatim and slowly; by the last en masse, and instantaneously. Through the first the mind gradually grasps historical events; through the last they are presented like a living tableaux, complete in all their details. In the latter category stands the holy cross. It speaks a language to the Christian which appeals instantly to every faculty of his mind and soul. It strikes those chords of memory which take him back to Calvary, to the jeering rabble of Pilate, to the mocking minions of Caiphas, to the spectacle of a scourged, tortured, and crucified Redeemer.

Who can look upon this blessed emblem unmoved? Who can regard this mute memento of the Son of God in behalf of fallen man without sentiments of love, respect, and veneration? May God in his mercy grant that every one may properly appreciate this great emblem of Christianity—the symbol of symbols. The likeness of a crucified Redeemer sanctifies and hallows it. Not only at the name, but at the semblance of Jesus, let every knee bend in adoration.

The Story of a Conscript.

Translated From The French.

XIX.

In the midst of such thoughts, day broke. Nothing was stirring yet, and Zébédé said:

"What a chance for us, if the enemy should fear to attack us!"

The officers spoke of an armistice; but suddenly about nine o'clock, our couriers came galloping in, crying that the enemy was moving his whole line down upon us, and directly after we heard cannon on our right, along the Elster. We were already under arms, and set out across the fields toward the Partha to return to Schoenfeld. The battle had begun.

On the hills overlooking the river, two or three divisions, with batteries in the intervals, and cannon at the flanks, awaited the enemy's approach; beyond, over the points of their bayonets, we could see the Prussians, the Swedes, and the Russians, advancing on all sides in deep, never-ending masses. Shortly after, we took our place in line, between two hills, and then we saw five or six thousand Prussians crossing the river, and all together shouting, "Vaterland! Vaterland!" This caused a tremendous tumult, like that of clouds of rooks flying north.

At the same instant the musketry opened from both sides of the river. The valley through which the Partha flows was filled with smoke; the Prussians were already upon us—we could see their furious eyes and wild looks; they seemed like savage beasts rushing down on us. Then but one shout of "Vive l'Empereur!" smote the sky and we dashed forward. The shock was terrible; thousands of bayonets crossed; we drove them back, were ourselves driven back; muskets were clubbed; the opposing ranks were confounded and mingled in one mass; the fallen were trampled upon, while the thunder of artillery, the whistling of bullets, and the thick white smoke enclosing all, made the valley seem the pit of hell, peopled by contending demons.

Despair urged us, and the wish to revenge our deaths before yielding up our lives. The pride of boasting that they once defeated Napoleon incited the Prussians; for they are the proudest of men, and their victories at Gross-Beeren and Katzbach had made them fools. But the river swept away them and their pride! Three times they crossed and rushed at us. We were indeed forced back by the shock of their numbers, and how they shouted then! They seemed to wish to devour us. Their officers, waving their swords in the air, cried, "Vorwärtz! Vorwärtz!" and all advanced like a wall with the greatest courage—that we cannot deny. Our cannon opened huge gaps in their lines, still they pressed on; but at the top of the hill we charged again, and drove them to the river. We would have massacred them to a man, were it not for one of their batteries before Mockern, which enfiladed us and forced us to give up the pursuit.

This lasted until two o'clock; half our officers were killed or wounded; the Colonel, Lorain, was among the first, and the Commandant, Gémeau, the latter; all along the river side were heaps of dead, or wounded men crawling away from the struggle. Some, furious, would rise to their knees to fire a last shot or deliver a final bayonet-thrust. The river was almost choked with dead, but no one thought of the bodies as they swept by in the current. The lines contending in the fight reached from Schoenfeld to Grossdorf.

At length the Swedes and Prussians ceased their attacks, and started farther up the river to turn our position, and masses of Russians came to occupy the places they had left.

The Russians formed in two columns, and descended to the valley, with shouldered arms, in admirable order. Twice they assailed us with the greatest bravery, but without uttering wild beasts' cries, like the Prussians. Their calvary attempted to carry the old bridge above Schoenfeld, and the cannonade increased. On all sides, as far as sight could reach, we saw only the enemy massing their forces, and when we had repulsed one of their columns, another of fresh men took its place. The fight had ever to be fought over again.

Between two and three o'clock, we learned that the Swedes and the Prussian cavalry had crossed the river above Grossdorf, and were about to take us in the rear, a mode which pleased them much better than fighting face to face. Marshal Ney immediately changed front, throwing his right wing to the rear. Our division still remained supported on Schoenfeld, but all the others retired from the Partha, to stretch along the plain, and the entire army formed but one line around Leipsic.

The Russians, behind the road to Mockern, prepared for a third attack toward three o'clock; our officers were making new dispositions to receive them; when a sort of shudder ran from one end of our lines to the other, and in a few moments all knew that the sixteen thousand Saxons and the Wurtemberg calvary, in our very centre, had passed over to the enemy, and that on their way they had the infamy to turn the forty guns they carried with them, on their old brothers-in-arms of Durutte's division.

This treason, instead of discouraging us, so added to our fury, that if we had been allowed, we would have crossed the river to massacre them. They say that they were defending their country. It is false! They had only to have left us on the Duben road; why did they not go then! They might have done like the Bavarians and quitted us before the battle; they might have remained neutral—might have refused to serve; but they deserted us only because fortune was against us. If they knew we were going to win, they would have continued our very good friends, so that they might have their share of the spoil or glory—as after Jena and Friedland. This is what every one thought, and it is why those Saxons are, and will ever remain, traitors; not only did they abandon their friends in distress, but they murdered them, to make a welcome with the enemy. God is just, and so great was their new allies' scorn of them, that they divided half Saxony between themselves after the battle. The French might well laugh at Prussian, Austrian, and Russian gratitude.

From the time of this desertion until evening, it was a war of vengeance that we carried on; the allies might crush us by numbers, but they should pay dearly for their victory!

At nightfall, while two thousand pieces of artillery were thundering together, we were attacked for the seventh time in Schoenfeld. The Russians on one side and the Prussians on the other poured in upon us. We defended every house. In every lane the walls crumbled beneath the bullets, and roofs fell in on every side. There were now no shouts as at the beginning of the battle; all were cool and pale with rage. The officers had collected scattered muskets and cartridge-boxes, and now loaded and fired like the men. We defended the gardens, too, and the cemetery, where we had bivouacked, until there were more dead above than beneath the soil. Every inch of earth cost a life.

It was night when Marshal Ney brought up a reenforcement—whence I knew not. It was what remained of Ricard's division and Sonham's second. The débris of our regiments united, and hurled the Russians to the other side of the old bridge, which no longer had a rail, that having been swept away by the shot. Six twelve-pounders were posted on the bridge, and maintained a fire for one hour longer. The remainder of the battalion, and of some others in our rear, supported the guns; and I remember how their flashes lit up the forms of men and horses, heaped beneath the dark arches. The sight lasted only a moment, but it was a horrible moment indeed.

At half-past seven, masses of cavalry advanced on our left, and we saw them whirling about two large squares, which slowly retired. Then we received orders to retreat. Not more than two or three thousand men remained at Schoenfeld with the six pieces of artillery. We reached Kohlgarten without being pursued, and were to bivouac around Rendnitz. Zébédé was yet living, and unwounded; and, as we marched on, listening to the cannonade, which continued, despite the darkness, along the Elster, he said suddenly:

"How is it that we are here, Joseph, when so many others that stood by our side are dead? It seems as if we bore charmed lives, and could not die."

I made no reply.

"Think you there was ever before such a battle?" he asked. "No, it cannot be. It is impossible."

It was indeed a battle of giants. From six in the morning until seven in the evening we had held our own against three hundred and sixty thousand men, without, at night, having lost an inch; and, nevertheless, we were but a hundred and thirty thousand. God keep me from speaking ill of the Germans. They were fighting for the independence of their country. But they might do better than celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic every year. There is not much to boast of in fighting an enemy three to one.

Approaching Rendnitz, we marched over heaps of dead. At every step we encountered dismounted cannon, broken caissons, and trees cut down by shot. There a division of the Young Guard and the grenadiers-à-cheval, led by Napoleon himself, had repulsed the Swedes who were advancing into the breach made by the treachery of the Saxons. Two or three burning houses lit up the scene. The grenadiers-à-cheval were yet at Rendnitz, but crowds of disbanded troops were passing up and down the street. No rations had been distributed, and all were seeking something to eat and drink.

As we defiled by a large house, we saw behind the wall of a court two cantinières, who were giving the soldiers drink from their wagons. There were there chasseurs, cuirassiers, lancers, hussars, infantry of the line and of the guard, all mingled together, with torn uniforms, broken shakos, and plumeless helmets, and all seemingly famished.

Two or three dragoons stood on the wall, near a pot of burning pitch, their arms crossed on their long white cloaks, covered from head to foot with blood.

Zébédé, without speaking, pushed me with his elbow, and we entered the court, while the others pursued their way. It took us full a quarter of an hour to reach one of the wagons. I held up a crown of six livres, and the cantinières, kneeling behind her cask, handed me a great glass of brandy and a piece of white bread, at the same time taking my money. I drank, and passed the glass to Zébédé, who emptied it. We had as much difficulty in getting out of the crowd as in entering. Hard, famished faces and cavernous eyes were on all sides of us. No one moved willingly. Each thought only of himself, and cared not for his neighbor. They had escaped a thousand deaths to-day only to dare a thousand more to-morrow. Well might they mutter, "Every one for himself, and God £or all."

As we went through the village street, Zébédé said, "You have bread?"

"Yes."

I broke it in two, and gave him half. We began to eat, at the same time hastening on, and had taken our places in the ranks before any one noticed our absence. The firing yet continued at a distance. At midnight we arrived at the long promenades which border the Pleisse, and halted under the old leafless lindens, and stacked arms. A long line of fires flickered in the fog as far as Randstadt; and, when the flames burnt high, they threw a glare on groups of Polish lancers, lines of horses, cannon, and wagons, while, at intervals beyond, sentinels stood like statues in the mist. A heavy, hollow sound arose from the city, and mingled with the rolling of our trains over the bridge at Lindenau. It was the beginning of the retreat.

XX.

What occurred until daybreak I know not. Baggage, wounded, and prisoners doubtless continued to crowd across the bridge. But then a terrific shock woke us all. We started up, thinking the enemy were on us, when two officers of hussars came galloping in with the news that a powder-wagon had exploded by accident in the grand avenue of Randstadt, at the river-side. The dark, red smoke rolled to the sky, and slowly disappeared, while the old houses continued to shake as if an earthquake were rolling by.

Quiet was soon restored. Some lay down again to sleep; but it was growing lighter every minute; and, glancing toward the river, I saw our troops extending until lost in distance along the five bridges of the Elster and Pleisse, which follow one after the other, and make, so to speak, but one. Thousands of men must defile over this bridge, and, of necessity, take time in doing so. And the idea struck every one that it would have been much better to have thrown several bridges across the two rivers; for at any instant the enemy might attack us, and then retreat would become difficult indeed. But the emperor had forgotten to give the order, and no one dared do anything without orders. Not a marshal of France would have dared to take it upon himself to say that two bridges were better than one. To such a point had the terrible discipline of Napoleon reduced those old captains! They obeyed like machines, and disturbed themselves about nothing. Such was their fear of displeasing their master. As I gazed at the thousands of artillerymen and baggage-guards swarming over the bridge, and saw the tall bear-skin shakos of the Old Guard, immovable on the hill of Lindenau, on the other side of the river—as I thought they were fairly on the way to France, how I longed to be in their place!

But I felt bitterly, indeed, when, about seven o'clock, three wagons came to distribute provisions and ammunition among us, and it became evident that we were to be the rear-guard. In spite of my hunger, I felt like throwing my bread into the river. A few moments after, two squadrons of Polish lancers appeared coming up the bank, and behind them five or six generals, Poniatowski among the number. He was a man of about fifty, tall, slight, and with a melancholy expression. He passed without looking at us. General Fournier, who now commanded our brigade, spurred from among his staff, and cried:

"By file left!"

I never so felt my heart sink. I would have sold my life for two farthings; but nevertheless, we had to move on, and turn our backs to the bridge.

We soon arrived at a place called Hinterthor—an old gate on the road to Caunewitz. To the right and left stretched ancient ramparts, and behind rows of houses. We were posted in covered roads, near this gate, which the sappers had strongly barricaded. A few worm-eaten palisades served us for intrenchments, and, on all the roads before us, the enemy were advancing. This time they wore white coats and flat caps, with a raised piece in front, on which we could see the two-headed eagle of the kreutzers. Old Pinto, who recognized them at once, cried:

"Those fellows are the Kaiserliks! We have beaten them fifty times since 1793; but if the father of Marie Louise had a heart, they would be with us now instead of against us."

For some moments a cannonade had been going on at the other side of the city, where Blücher was attacking the faubourg of Halle. Soon after, the firing stretched along to the right; it was Bernadotte attacking the faubourg of Kohlgartenthor, and at the same time the first shells of the Austrians fell among us. They formed their columns of attack on the Caunewitz road, and poured down on us from all sides. Nevertheless, we held our own until about ten o'clock, and then were forced back to the old ramparts, through the breaches of which the Kaiserliks pursued us under the cross-fire of the fourteenth and twenty-ninth of the line. The poor Austrians were not inspired with the fury of the Prussians, but nevertheless, showed a true courage; for, in half an hour, they had won the ramparts, and although, from all the neighboring windows, we kept up a deadly fire, we could not force them back. Six months before, it would have horrified me to think of men being thus slaughtered, but now I was as insensible as any old soldier, and the death of one man or of a hundred would not cost me a thought.

Until this time all had gone well, but how were we to get out of the houses? The enemy held every avenue, and it seemed that we would be caught like foxes in their holes, and I thought it not unlikely that the Austrians, in revenge for the loss we had inflicted upon them, might put us to the point of the bayonet. Meditating thus, I ran back to a room, where a dozen of us yet remained, and there I saw Sergeant Pinto leaning against the wall, his arms hanging by his sides, and his face white as paper. He had just received a bullet in the breast; but the old man's warrior soul was still strong within him, as he cried:

"Defend yourselves, conscripts! Defend yourselves! Show the Kaiserliks that a French soldier is yet worth four of them! Ah! the villains!"

We heard the sound of blows on the door below thundering like cannon-shots. We still kept up our fire, but hopelessly, when we heard the clatter of hoofs without. The firing ceased, and we saw through the smoke four squadrons of lancers dashing like a troop of lions through the midst of the Austrians. All yielded before them. The Kaiserliks fled, but the long, blue lancers, with their red pennons, were swifter than they, and many a white coat was pierced from behind. The lancers were Poles—the most terrible warriors I have ever seen, and, to speak truth, our friends and our brothers. They never turned from us in our hour of need; they gave us the last drop of their blood. And what have we done for their unhappy country? When I think of our ingratitude, my heart bleeds.

The Poles rescued us. Seeing them so proud and brave, we rushed out, attacking the Austrians with the bayonet, and driving them into the trenches. We were for the time victorious, but it was time to beat a retreat, for the enemy were already filling Leipsic; the gates of Halle and Grimma were forced, and that of Peters-Thau delivered up by our friends the Badeners and our other friends the Saxons. Soldiers, citizens, and students kept up a fire from the windows on our retiring troops.

We had only time to re-form and take the road along the Pleisse; the lancers awaited us there; we defiled behind them, and, as the Austrians again pressed around us, they charged once more to drive them back. What brave fellows and magnificent horsemen were those Poles!

The division, reduced from fifteen to eight thousand men, retired step by step before fifty thousand foes, and not without often turning and replying to the Austrian fire.

We neared the bridge—with what joy, I need not say. But it was no easy task to reach it, for infantry and horse crowded the whole width of the avenue, and arrived from all the neighboring roads, until the crowd formed an impenetrable mass, which advanced slowly, with groans and smothered cries, which might be heard at a distance of half a mile, despite the rattling of musketry. Woe to those upon the other side of the bridge! they were forced into the water and no one stretched a hand to save them. In the middle, men and even horses were carried along with the crowd; they had no need of making any exertion of their own. But how were we to get there? The enemy were advancing nearer and nearer every moment. It is true we had stationed a few cannon so as to sweep the principal approaches, and some troops yet remained in line to repulse their attacks; but they had guns to sweep the bridge, and those who remained behind must receive their whole fire. This accounted for the press on the bridge.

At two or three hundred paces from the crowd, the idea of rushing forward and throwing myself into the midst entered my mind; but Captain Vidal, Lieutenant Bretonville, and other old officers said:

"Shoot down the first man that leaves the ranks!"

It was horrible to be so near safety, and yet unable to escape.

This was between eleven and twelve o'clock. The fusilade grew nearer on the right and left, and a few bullets began to whistle over our heads. From the side of Halle we saw the Prussians rush out pell-mell with our own soldiers. Terrible cries now arose from the bridge. Cavalry, to make way for themselves, sabred the infantry, who replied with the bayonet. It was a general sauve qui peut. At every step of the crowd, some one fell from the bridge, and, trying to regain his place, dragged five or six with him into the water.

In the midst of this horrible confusion, this pandemonium of shouts, cries, groans, musket-shots, and sabre-strokes, a crash like a peal of thunder was heard, and the first arch of the bridge rose upward into the air with all upon it. Hundreds of wretches were torn to pieces, and hundreds of others crushed beneath the falling ruins.

A sapper had blown up the arch!

At this sight, the cry of treason rang from mouth to mouth. "We are lost—betrayed!" was now the cry on all sides. The tumult was fearful. Some, in the rage of despair, turned upon the enemy like wild beasts at bay, thinking only of vengeance; others broke their arms, cursing heaven and earth for their misfortunes. Mounted officers and generals dashed into the river to cross it by swimming, and many soldiers followed them without taking time to throw off their knapsacks. The thought that the last hope of safety was gone, and nothing now remained but to be massacred, made men mad. I had seen the Partha choked with dead bodies the day before, but this scene was a thousand times more horrible; drowning wretches dragging down those who happened to be near them; shrieks and yells of rage, or for help; a broad river concealed by a mass of heads and struggling arms.

Captain Vidal, who, by his coolness and steady eye, had hitherto kept us to our duty, even Captain Vidal now appeared discouraged. He thrust his sabre into the scabbard, and cried, with a strange laugh:

"The game is up! Let us be gone!"

I touched his arm; he looked sadly and kindly at me.

"What do you wish, my child?" he asked.

"Captain," said I, "I was four months in the hospital at Leipsic; I have bathed in the Elster, and I know a ford."

"Where?"

"Ten minutes' march above the bridge."

He drew his sabre at once from its sheath, and shouted:

"Follow me, mes enfants! and you, Bertha, lead."

The entire battalion, which did not now number more than two hundred men, followed; a hundred others, who saw us start confidently forward, joined us. I recognized the road which Zunnier and I had traversed so often in July, when the ground was covered with flowers. The enemy fired on us, but we did not reply. I entered the water first; Captain Vidal next, then the others, two abreast. It reached our shoulders, for the river was swollen by the autumn rains; but we crossed, notwithstanding, without the loss of a man. We pressed onward across the fields, and soon reached the little wooden bridge at Schleissig, and thence turned to Lindenau.

We marched silently, turning from time to time to gaze on the other side of the Elster, where the battle still raged in the streets of Leipsic. The furious shouts, and the deep boom of cannon still reached our ears; and it was only when, about two o'clock, we overtook the long column which stretched, till lost in distance, on the road to Erfurt, that the sounds of conflict were lost in the roll of wagons and artillery trains.

XXI.

Hitherto I have described the grandeur of war—battles glorious to France, notwithstanding our mistakes and misfortunes. When we were fighting all Europe alone, always one against two, and often one to three; when we finally succumbed, not through the courage of our foes, but borne down by treason and the weight of numbers, we had no reason to blush for our defeat, and the victors have little reason to exult in it. It is not numbers that makes the glory of a people or an army—it is virtue and bravery.

But now I must relate the horrors of retreat. It is said that confidence gives strength, and this is especially true of the French. While they advanced in full hope of victory, they were united; the will of their chiefs was their only law; they knew that they could succeed only by strict observance of discipline. But when driven back, no one had confidence save in himself, and commands were forgotten. Then these men—once so brave and so proud, who marched so gayly to the fight—scattered to right and left; sometimes fleeing alone, sometimes in groups. Then those who, a little while before trembled at their approach, grew bold; they came on, first timidly, but, meeting no resistance, became insolent. Then they would swoop down and carry off three or four laggards at a time, as I have seen crows swoop upon a fallen horse, which they did not dare approach while he could yet remain on his feet.

I have seen miserable Cossacks—very beggars, with nothing but old rags hanging around them; an old cap of tattered skin over their ears; unshorn beards, covered with vermin; mounted on old worn-out horses, without saddles, and with only a piece of rope by way of stirrups, an old rusty pistol all their fire-arms, and a nail at the end of a pole for a lance; I have seen these wretches, who resembled sallow and decrepit Jews more than soldiers, stop ten, fifteen, twenty of our men, and lead them off like sheep.

And the tall, lank peasants, who, a few months before, trembled if we only looked at them—I have seen them arrogantly repulse old soldiers—cuirassiers, artillerymen, dragoons who had fought through the Spanish war, men who could have crushed them with a blow of their fist; I have seen these peasants insist that they had no bread to sell, while the odor of the oven arose on all sides of us; that they had no wine, no beer, when we heard glasses clinking to right and left. And no one dared punish them; no one dared take what he wanted from the wretches who laughed to see us in such straits, for each one was retreating on his own account; we had no leaders, no discipline, and they could easily out-number us.

And to hunger, misery, weariness, and fever, the horrors of an approaching winter were added. The rain never ceased falling from the gray sky, and the winds pierced us to the bones. How could poor beardless conscripts, mere shadows, fleshless and worn out, endure all this? They perished by thousands; their bodies covered the roads. The terrible typhus pursued us. Some said it was a plague, engendered by the dead not being buried deep enough; others, that it was the consequence of sufferings that required more than human strength to bear. I know not how this may be, but the villages of Alsace and Lorraine, to which we brought it, will long remember their sufferings; of a hundred attacked by it, not more than ten or twelve, at the most, recovered.

At length, on the evening of the nineteenth, we bivouacked at Lutzen, where our regiments re-formed as best they might. The next day we skirmished with the Westphalians, and at Erfurt we received new shoes and uniforms. Five or six disbanded companies joined our battalion—nearly all conscripts. Our new coats and shoes were miles too large for us; but they were warm. The Cossacks reconnoitred us from a distance. Our hussars would drive them off; but they returned the moment pursuit was relaxed. Many of our men went pillaging in the night, and were absent at roll-call, and the sentries received orders to shoot all who attempted to leave their bivouacs.

I had had the fever ever since we left Leipsic; it increased day by day, and I became so weak that I could scarcely rise in the mornings to follow the march. Zébédé looked sadly at me, and sometimes said:

"Courage, Joseph! We will soon be at home!"

These words reanimated me; I felt my face flush.

"Yes, yes!" I said; "we will soon be home; I must see home once more!"

The tears forced themselves to my eyes. Zébédé carried my knapsack when I was tired, and continued:

"Lean on my arm. We are getting nearer every day, now, Joseph. A few dozen leagues are nothing."

My heart beat more bravely, but my strength was gone. I could no longer carry my musket; it was heavy as lead. I could not eat; my knees trembled beneath me; still I did not despair, but kept murmuring to myself: "This is nothing. When you see the spire of Phalsbourg, your fever will leave you. You will have good air, and Catharine will nurse you. All will yet be well!"

Others, no worse than I, fell by the roadside, but still I toiled on; when, near Folde, we learned that fifty thousand Bavarians were posted in the forests through which we were to pass, for the purpose of cutting off our retreat. This was my finishing stroke, for I knew I could no longer load, fire, or defend myself with the bayonet. I felt that all my sufferings to get so far toward home were useless. Nevertheless, I made an effort when we were ordered to march, and tried to rise.

"Come, come, Joseph!" said Zébédé; "courage!"

But I could not move, and lay sobbing like a child.

"Come! stand up!" he said.

"I cannot. O God! I cannot!"

I clutched his arm. Tears streamed down his face. He tried to lift me, but he was too weak. I held fast to him, crying:

"Zébédé, do not abandon me!"

Captain Vidal approached, and gazed sadly on me:

"Cheer up, my lad," said he; "the ambulances will be along in half an hour."

But I knew what that meant, and I drew Zébédé closer to me. He embraced me, and I whispered in his ear:

"Kiss Catharine for me—for my last farewell. Tell her that I died thinking of God's holy mother and of her."

"Yes, yes!" he sobbed. "My poor Joseph!"

I could cling to him no longer. He placed me on the ground, and ran away without turning his head. The column departed, and I gazed at it as one who sees his last hope fading from his eyes. The last of the battalion disappeared over the ridge of a hill. I closed my eyes. An hour passed, or perhaps a longer time, when the boom of cannon startled me, and I saw a division of the guard pass at a quick step with artillery and wagons. Seeing some sick in the wagons, I cried wistfully:

"Take me! Take me!"

But no one listened; still they kept on, while the thunder of artillery grew louder and louder. More than ten thousand men, calvary and infantry, passed me, but I had no longer strength to call out to them.

At last the long line ended; I saw knapsacks and shakos disappear behind the hill, and I lay down to sleep for ever, when once more I was aroused by the rolling of five or six pieces of artillery along the road. The cannoneers sat sabre in hand, and behind came the caissons. I hoped no more from these than from the others, when suddenly I perceived a tall, lean, red-bearded veteran mounted beside one of the pieces, and bearing the cross upon his breast. It was my old friend Zunnier, my old comrade of Leipsic. He was passing without seeing me, when I cried, with all the strength that remained to me:

"Christian! Christian!"

He heard me in spite of the noise of the guns; stopped, and turned round.

"Christian!" I cried, "take pity on me!"

He saw me lying at the foot of a tree, and came to me with a pale face and staring eyes:

"What! Is it you, my poor Joseph?" cried he, springing from his horse.

He lifted me in his arms as if I were an infant, and shouted to the men who were driving the last wagon:

"Halt!"

Then embracing me, he placed me in it, my head upon a knapsack. I saw too that he wrapped great cavalry cloak around my feet, as he cried:

"Forward! Forward! It is growing warm yonder!"

I remember no more, but I have a faint impression of hearing again the sound of heavy guns and rattle of musketry, mingled with shouts and commands. Branches of tall pines seemed to pass between me and the sky through the night; but all this might have been a dream. But that day, behind Solmunster, in the woods of Hanau, we had a battle with the Bavarians, and routed them.

XXII.

On the fifteenth of January, 1814, two months and a half after the battle of Hanau, I awoke in a good bed, and at the end of a little, well-warmed room; and gazing at the rafters over my head, then at the little windows, where the frost had spread its silver sheen, I exclaimed, "It is winter!" At the same time I heard the crash of artillery and the crackling of a fire, and turning over on my bed in a few moments, I saw seated at its side a pale young woman, with her arms folded, and I recognized—Catharine! I recognized, too, the room where I had spent so many Sundays before going to the wars. But the thunder of the cannon made me think I was dreaming. I gazed for a long while at Catharine, who seemed more beautiful than ever, and the question rose, "Where is Aunt Grédel? am I at home once more? God grant that this be not a dream!"

At last I took courage and called softly:

"Catharine!" And she, turning her head, cried:

"Joseph! Do you know me?"

"Yes," I replied, holding out my hand.

She approached, trembling and sobbing, when again and again the cannon thundered.

"What are those shots I hear?" I cried.

"The guns of Phalsbourg," she answered. "The city is besieged."

"Phalsbourg besieged! The enemy in France!"

I could speak no more. Thus had so much suffering, so many tears, so many thousands of lives gone for nothing—ay, worse than nothing, for the foe was at our homes. For an hour I could think of nothing else; and even now, old and gray-haired as I am, the thought fills me with bitterness; Yes, we old men have seen the German, the Russian, the Swede, the Spaniard, the Englishman, masters of France, garrisoning our cities, taking whatever suited them from our fortresses, insulting our soldiers, changing our flag, and dividing among themselves, not only our conquests since 1804, but even those of the republic. These were the fruits of ten years of glory!

But let us not speak of these things. They will tell us that after Lutzen and Bautzen, the enemy offered to leave us Belgium, part of Holland, all the left bank of the Rhine as far as Bâle, with Savoy and the kingdom of Italy; and that the emperor refused to accept these conditions, brilliant as they were, because he placed the satisfaction of his own pride before the happiness of France!

But to return to my story. For two weeks after the battle of Hanau, thousands of wagons, filled with wounded, crowded the road from Strasbourg to Nancy, and passed through Phalsbourg. Not one in the sad cortége escaped the eyes of Aunt Grédel and Catharine, and thousands of fathers and mothers sought among them for their children. The third day Catharine found me among a heap of other wretches, with sunken cheeks and glaring eyes—dying of hunger.

She knew me at once, but Aunt Grédel gazed long before she cried, "Yes! it is he! It is Joseph!"

They took me home. Why should I describe my long illness, my shrieks for water, my almost miraculous escape from what seemed certain death? Let it suffice the kind reader to know that, six months after, Catharine and I were married; that Monsieur Goulden gave me half his business, and that we lived together as happy as birds.

The wars were ended, but the Bourbons had been taught nothing by their misfortunes, and the emperor only awaited the moment of vengeance. But here let us rest. If people of sense tell me that I have done well in relating my campaign of 1813—that my story may show youth the vanity of military glory, and prove that no man can gain happiness save by peace, liberty, and labor—then I will take up my pen once more, and give you the story of Waterloo!

The Episcopalian Crisis.

In medical science, a crisis is the change in a disease which indicates its event, the recovery or death of the patient, and is, therefore, the critical moment. Webster also defines crisis to be "the decisive state of things, or the point of time when an affair is arrived at its height, and must soon terminate, or suffer a material change." No attentive observer of the religious movements which are going on around us can fail to see that the Episcopalians are, at this moment, in an interesting condition. On the one hand, the ritualists are pushing ceremonial and doctrine much further than even the elasticity of Protestantism will permit, while, on the other, the low-churchmen, alarmed at the demonstrations of their opponents, are renewing the battle-cries of the Reformation, lest the labors of Luther and Henry VIII, should be frustrated in their communion. There will soon be the clashing of arms and the interchange of active hostilities. As Catholics, we cannot but take a deep interest in the result, and we hope that all the combatants will, before going into battle, understand the cause for which they are fighting, and then faithfully fight to victory or death. An honest man should always stand by his colors, or at least openly renounce them. The object of this article is, to give a diagnosis of the present state of Episcopalianism, and, as far as our abilities and kind intentions go, to prescribe a remedy for the patient.

In the first place, we find that there is a feverish excitement about the trial of the Rev. Mr. Tyng, who, in violation of a canon, has had the hardihood to preach in a church of another denomination than his own. The canon under which he is arraigned seems to present a case against the reverend gentleman, and from the complexion of the court appointed to try him he has little chance of escaping conviction. But we imagine that even his condemnation will be nominal, and appear more as the assertion of a power than the exercise of it. The low-churchmen are quite excited by the discussion of the points involved in the trial. A writer in The Episcopalian considers the affair as the most important in the annals of American ecclesiastical history. Whatever the verdict of the court may be, it is of little account compared to the angry feelings and bitter divisions among brethren which will flow from it, and become more or less permanent. Certainly, there is more bitterness among the different sections of Episcopalians, than there is between them and other Protestants. Low-churchmen love their Protestant brethren, with the one exception of high-churchmen, whom they regard with a natural antipathy. High-churchmen love none but themselves, not the sects whom they eschew, nor the Catholic Church, which eschews them. The trial of Rev. Mr. Tyng is not the cause of the angry feelings which are now manifested, but merely the occasion for bringing them out. They exist before any occasion, and are found in the very heart of the Episcopal Church. If the Rev. Dr. Dix had preached in a Methodist place of worship, it is quite possible that no one would have made objection; but Mr. Tyng, being on the other side of the house, cannot have the same liberty. The truth is, that all rules have a wide interpretation, and are to be explained by custom, and here the defendant in the exciting trial has the advantage. Even if he should be condemned, he will be likely to have nearly all the popular sympathy, and so will become the greater man, as a kind of martyr for his principles.

The occasion, however, has brought out a bold manifesto from the high-churchmen, which is to be understood as their platform, around which they seek to rally their friends. Sixty-four clergymen have joined together to form what they call "The American Church Union," to which they invite all Episcopalians who sympathize with them. They declare that the evils of the time are fearful, "the young are growing up without education, the community is familiarized with scenes of lewdness, the marriage contract is made contemptible, the ordinances of the Gospel of Christ are disused, and the public worship of God is neglected." While thus the torrent of iniquity rages around them, they find that an evil has arisen within the Episcopal fold, which threatens the subversion of their whole system. It is nothing less than the denial of the necessity of ordination of ministers by bishops. "The right is claimed of preaching anywhere, at pleasure; ministers of non-Episcopal communities are invited to preach in our churches; and the intention is announced of breaking down every barrier between our church and the religious bodies around her." To counteract this destructive movement, they associate themselves together, in a union offensive and defensive. They promise to uphold the laws, the canons, and to follow the "godly admonitions of the bishops," while they seek "to maintain unimpaired principles which they have received from their fathers, Seabury, White, Griswold, Hobart, Doane, and Wainwright."

While we confess that our sympathies are with the signers of this pastoral, we frankly avow that it is somewhat vague and, to our minds, inconsistent. No doctrine whatever is clearly stated, except that of the necessity of episcopal ordination. The creeds are referred to, and the (undisputed?) general councils; but no explanation of their teaching is given. And then, he will be a wise man who can follow, at the same time, in the steps of the fathers whom they name. Seabury, Hobart, and Doane were high-churchmen in various degrees of altitude; but White and Griswold were quite on the other side of the fence; while Dr. Wainwright was generally thought to have been on both sides at the same time. To us, therefore, he seems the best and most gentlemanly model for the rising generation of churchmen who would be "all things to all men." Then, again, he who would follow the godly admonitions of the bishops must be able to go to the four points of the compass at the same time. Fancy an adventurer who would obey the admonitions of Bishops McIlvaine and Potter, or, at the same time, follow the counsels of Doctors Coxe and Clark. The convulsions of Mazeppa would be nothing to the agonies of his mind. No physician could prescribe a remedy for such a patient. "No man can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other, or cleave to the one and despise the other." Why, therefore, in this enlightened day, write contradictions and talk nonsense? Some time ago, twenty-eight bishops made a solemn declaration against ritualism; "and," says the Protestant Churchman, "one of the gentlemen who has signed this address of the American Union not only soundly lectured, but held up to scorn and derision" these prelates, and especially the Boanerges of Western New York, who, smelling Romanism from afar, vaults like a beaked bird upon his prey. "O shame!" says the writer we have quoted, "where is thy blush?"

While thus the armies of the high-churchmen have begun to array themselves for battle, the bugle sounds loudly from the opposing camp, and the evangelicals are gathering together in earnest. A church union is being formed among them, and a writer in the Episcopalian thus speaks the designs of his party: "Let this evangelical church union be extended to every diocese and parish in the land where its principles are approved. The sacramental system is not the Gospel system, but its direct antipodes, in which the sacraments are degraded from their true position of sacred emblems, and made to serve as pack-horses to carry lazy sinners to heaven. I hear hundreds of ministers and thousands of laymen exclaim, 'Oh! that we had the power to rescue the church from the hands of those who are corrupting it!' These will be rejoiced to learn that nothing is more simple and feasible. How? I reply by saying, what even high-churchmen will hardly dare to deny, that the church of the Reformation was eminently an evangelical church, and that the evangelical portion of the present Episcopal Church constitutes absolutely all of the real successors of the English Reformed Church in this country. Ritualists and sacramentarians have no more right in this communion than avowed Romanists." The low-churchmen have the decided majority, and thus give letters dimissory to their offending brethren. "God speed the Church Union!" says a contributor to the Protestant Churchman; "but let Mr. Hopkins and his friends beware lest they themselves should be the very first upon whom this discipline shall fall. Dr. Guillotine experienced the beautiful operation of that ingenious instrument of death invented by himself. This is a precedent from which these gentlemen might learn a lesson."

The low-churchmen make a point that, while they prefer the episcopal form as more scriptural and more conformed to the primitive system, they do not unchurch other Christian denominations, and that, in this respect, they follow the teachings of the founders of the reformed English communion. They also contend that the right of the church to amend or change its laws and services is inalienable, and that the time has arrived when some important changes should be made. Bishop Griswold, whose "godly admonitions" the Church Union desires to follow, thus expressed himself: "In the baptismal office are, unfortunately, some few words which are well known to be more injurious to the peace and growth of our church than any one thing that can be named." "Allow me," says the Bishop of Chester, "to omit or alter fifteen words, and I will reconcile fifteen thousand dissenters to the church." It appears, also, that an opinion was expressed by a late presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church that the great body of Episcopalians desire some change in the phraseology of their services, and that the peace and prosperity of the church require it.

Here, then, the impartial observer can see how the ground lies. The high-churchmen insist upon Episcopal ordination, and are determined to resist all changes, while they are, many of them, disposed to give a Catholic interpretation to the articles and liturgy. The low-churchmen oppose them on all these points, and insist that a Protestant communion ought not to call itself Catholic, or use words of doubtful meaning; and that the literal sense of the articles which form their real confession of faith should be imposed upon all Episcopalians. We have ventured to call this a crisis because, if there be vitality in either party, there must come a conflict from which one side must retire defeated, leaving the field and the spoils of war to the victors. But as this is not the first crisis which has occurred in the history of Anglicanism, we opine that the battle will be fought with blank cartridges, and that, after considerable smoke, it will be found that nobody is hurt. Then from the unbloody field the combatants will retire to war with words, and to be greater enemies than ever. Individual soldiers will lay down their arms to sally in the direction of Geneva or Rome; but the great Episcopal body will quietly await another crisis. Yet this condition of a church which claims (according to some of its members—the Pan-Anglican Synod, for example) to be a part of the Catholic Church, is not healthy. In contradictories there cannot be accord, and one is right and the other is certainly wrong. A careful diagnosis of the malady of our patient leads us to the following conclusions: No one is bound to impossibilities, and therefore, before their own church, the low-churchmen are right on all points of the controversy, while, before the Christian world, their opponents are singularly isolated and unfortunate. The Episcopal Church contains two opposing elements which must ever war against each other, and, while there are inconsistencies in both liturgy and articles, the low-churchmen stand upon the only reasonable ground, and say with truth to their adversaries, that they who would be sacramentarians ought to go where their system properly belongs, and where all other things are in harmony with it. Such, we are sure, will be the judgment of the impartial observer.

1. The Episcopalians have a right to reform their services whenever they choose, and are at perfect liberty to agitate the question. By the constitution of their own church, they have the power to alter, change, or modify both their liturgy and their creeds. Did not the Church of England do this on several occasions? Has not the American Episcopal Church done it also? Did she not materially alter the prayer-book, leaving out, for example, both the form of absolution, and also the Athanasian Creed? That which has been done can surely be done again, especially in a body which disclaims infallibility, and is, therefore, sure of nothing, and is ever on all points open to progress. Here it seems to us that the high-churchmen have no ground on which to stand. They cannot assert that anything their church teaches is the voice of God, because she expressly tells them that she has no authority. They cannot hold any reasonable theory of ecclesiastical pretensions, because, by doing so, they would unchurch themselves. A church ought to know its own powers, if it have any. They may have their own opinions, and press them as such; but they have no right to lord it over the consciences of their brethren who disagree with them, as if they (the actual minority) were the church rather than their more numerous opponents. Their fathers whose "godly admonitions" they seek to follow, surely never meant to cast their "incomparable liturgy" in an iron mould. Besides, in sober common sense, all the extravagancies of the low-churchmen are nothing compared to the doings of the extreme ritualists, who have so metamorphosed the service that no uninitiated Episcopalian could ever recognize it. Think of changing every rubric, and engrafting upon the common prayer the actual ceremonies and even the words of the Roman missal. We understand that few of the signers of the union manifesto are opposed to these advances of ritualism, and that many of them are ready to hear confessions or celebrate Mass when a good occasion is offered. With what face, then, can they find fault with their brethren who exercise their liberty in another direction? And inasmuch as there is a manifest inconsistency between various parts of the prayer-book, it would be well for them and for truth to have their code revised, that the world may know precisely what they do mean.

2. On the vexed question of Episcopal ordination, we are convinced that the high-churchmen are wrong, before their own communion and before the world. The reformers under whose inspirations the English Church was formed, never intended to unchurch the religious bodies of the continent with whom they were in sympathy. The words of the ordinal refer only to the rule to be adopted in the Anglican body, and do not decide at all the question of the validity of non-Episcopal orders. The twenty-third of the thirty-nine articles is so expounded by Burnet. He says that by common consent a company of Christians may appoint one of their own members to minister to them in holy things; for we are sure "that not only those who penned the articles, but the body of this church for above half an age after, did, notwithstanding irregularities, acknowledge the foreign churches, so constituted, to be true churches as to all the essentials of a church. The article leaves the matter open for such accidents as had happened, and such as might still happen. Although their own church had been less forced to go out of the beaten path than any other, yet they knew that all things among themselves had not gone according to those rules that ought to be sacred in regular times. Necessity has no law, and is a law of itself."

The opinions of Cranmer, and of Barlow, the reported consecrator of Archbishop Parker, were distinctly Erastian. At a conference held at Windsor, 1547, Cranmer answers to the question, "Can a bishop make a priest?" as follows: "A bishop may make a priest, and so may princes and governors also, by the authority of God committed to them." Barlow replies, "Bishops have no authority to make priests without they be authorized by the Christian princes, and that laymen have other whiles made priests."

To the question, "Whether in the New Testament be required any consecration of a bishop or priest, or only appointing to the office be sufficient?" Cranmer answers, "He that is appointed to be a bishop or priest needeth no consecration by the Scriptures, for election or appointing thereto is sufficient." Barlow also expresses the same sentiment. (See Stillingfleet's Irenicum, and Collier, vol. ii. appendix.)

The "judicious" Hooker undoubtedly maintains the true Episcopalian belief, that ordination by bishops is preferable, but not of absolute necessity to a church. A very able article in this Magazine, published September, 1866, (Vol. III. No. 18,) shows the truth of our view. Passages are deduced from a work called Vox Ecclesiae, which contain the high-church position, and admit that in case of necessity (which is left to the individual to determine) "orthodox presbyters may ordain." As Archbishop Parker said, "Extreme necessity in itself implieth dispensation from all laws." The author of this article, to which we beg leave to refer our readers, shows plainly that such a doctrine "overthrows the very idea of apostolical succession, elevates human necessity above divine law, and legitimates every form of error and schism."

Before their own communion, therefore, the low-churchmen have every advantage, as they are consistent with the principles of the Reformation which brought their church into being. When Protestants desert their own platform, on what ground can they logically stand?

Secondly, before the Christian world the high-churchmen occupy a very unfortunate position. They make assertions which unchurch themselves, while they separate from their brethren, and aspire to an ecclesiastical status which they have not, which the whole world denies to them, and which they can never defend. If the apostolical succession is necessary to the existence of a church, then by the verdict of all who hold such a doctrine, they are no church; for with all their pretensions, they have it not. It has been shown over and over again, by arguments incontestable, that the ordination of Archbishop Parker, if indeed it ever took place, was wholly and entirely invalid. There is not satisfactory evidence that any ceremony of consecration was observed; there is no proof whatever that Barlow, the officiating prelate, was ever ordained; and lastly, the form used (according to the theory of the high-churchmen) was utterly inadequate to convey valid orders. What need, then, to argue further with those who will not see? If any Catholic bishop at this day should venture to consecrate with the form which they tell us was used in Parker's case, he would be subject to severe censure, and his act would be considered totally null and valueless. One would naturally suppose that the judgment of the Catholic Church on this question would be held in respect. She has preserved the ancient rite, and holds the absolute necessity of episcopal ordination; and while she considers it a sacrilege to reiterate the sacrament of orders, she reordains, without question and without condition, every English minister who, coming into her fold, aspires to the sacred priesthood. The same course has been adopted by what the Pan-Angelican Synod calls the Eastern Orthodox Church, which no more regards the Episcopalians as a church than she does the Methodists or Presbyterians. Is any more evidence required by any honest mind? If the opinion of the eastern churches is of any weight, it has been more than once given. Dr. J. J. Overbeck, a Russian priest, in a recent work on "Catholic Orthodoxy," treats at some length of the English orders, which he pronounces to be null. These are among his words:

"1. The Anglo-Catholic fathers, on the point of apostolical succession and its needfulness, held latitudinarian views, subversive of the whole fabric of the church.

2. The boasted unity or concord of Anglicans even in essentials is a specious illusion.

3. Anglo-Catholicism is genuine Protestantism decked and disfigured by Catholic spoils."

"As Parker's consecration was invalid, the apostolic line was broken off, irremediably broken off."

"If Rome considered all ordinations by Parker and his successors, namely, the whole present English episcopate and clergy, to be invalid, null, and void, and consistently reordained all those converts who wished and were fit for orders; the Eastern Church can but imitate her proceedings, as both, in this point, follow the very same principles. ... The fact of the reordination is the final and conclusive verdict on the invalidity of Anglican ordinations. By this fact all further controversy is broken off and indisputably settled."

We fancy, then, the amusement which the pastoral of the late Anglican Synod will produce in the Eastern churches, for whose benefit it has been translated into the Greek language. We would recommend to the great Patriarchs to send a commission of doctors to the West, that they may see that oneness of mind of which the bishops so fervently speak. Then when they see it, we would like to have them point it out to us, that we may see it also, and rejoice with them.

It may perhaps appear to some of our readers that our sympathies are with the low-churchmen and ultra-Protestants of the Episcopal communion. This is, however, far from being the case. We admire consistency and cannot accept logical contradictions. The Protestant ground is something that our reason can comprehend, though we believe it does away with all revelation and leads directly to infidelity. But God has furnished us with no mental powers by which to fathom a system which is neither one thing nor the other, which wears a Catholic exterior over a Protestant heart. Such will be the verdict of the world. How long Anglicanism can last we know not. It has been a kind of half-way house to the church, and it may occupy this position for a long time. It seems to us that every honest high-churchman should become a Catholic at once, when he will find what he wants, not simply on paper but in life, not in imagination but in reality. The movement called ritualism is an indication that the grace of God is stirring up the dry bones; for Anglicanism in itself is the most lifeless and unspiritual religion we know of. God grant that the movement may bring forth its proper fruits. We only fear that when it comes to "leaving all for Christ," to giving up houses and lands, wives and children, position and preferment, many will go back, (as we have seen with sorrow,) and be like the young man in the gospel, who was, at one time, "not far from the kingdom of heaven." Ritualism is only a yearning after the real presence of the Incarnate God, for which the redeemed soul longs even with anguish. "Tears were my meat, day and night, while they said to me. Where is thy God?" The true heart will find its Lord only in that one body which is his fulness. Pray, then, fellow-Catholics, pray for the sincere and true, that they may have grace to forsake the land of shadows, and come where are the bright beams of the morning; that ere the night of death overtake them, they may, like the pure-minded Simeon, see the salvation of God, and joyfully chant their "Nunc dimittis," "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

Bishop Doyle. [Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. By W. J. Fitzpatrick, J. P. 3 vols. 8vo. Boston: P. Donohoe.]

"What can you teach?" "Any thing from A, B, C, to the third book of Canon Law." "Pray, young man, can you teach and practise humility?" "I trust I have, at least, the humility to feel that the more I read the more I see how ignorant I have been, and how little can, at best, be known." Such were the pithy replies to the equally condensed questions put by the venerable Dean Staunton, of Carlow College, to a young Augustinian friar who had been proposed as candidate for a professorship in that rising institution. The friar was Father James Doyle, then in his twenty-seventh year. Erect in stature, austere in features, the candid earnestness of his mind beaming through his expressive countenance, which bore the evident traces of studious habits, and the freedom of his unpretentious manners—all these qualities, combined in his looks and declared by his language, immediately enlisted the sympathetic esteem of the dean. Nor was his youth an obstacle to his acceptance. His appointment to the position followed, and the six years spent by him in the college served as a fit preparation for the public career of this eminent man, the narrative of whose life forms an essential part of the history of his country for at least fifteen years.

From the valuable work to which reference is made in the note to this article, we find much to admire in the noble character who forms the subject of Mr. Fitzpatrick's literary effort. There must have been placed at his disposal a rich and abundant store of material from which the biography was compiled. The work itself, in a literary point of view, is creditable to the diligence of the author; but at present we shall content ourselves with an attempt to gather from its comprehensive pages, and place before our readers, some of the most remarkable events that distinguished the life and were influenced by the action of the eminent prelate.

Of respectable and honorably rebellious ancestors, he was born in New Ross, County of Wexford, in 1786. In an appendix to the work before us there is a chronological article showing the descent of the Doyle family from some ancient, royal sept—a portion of Irish history by no means uncommon—to which we would refer those who should doubt his original nobility of blood. For us it will suffice to know that some of his immediate relatives had fallen for their country and its faith, and that even as far back as 1691, there were few more distinguished than the bold Rapparee chieftain, "Brigadier Doyle," who was sent from Limerick, by Sarsfield, to collect men and horses for the Jacobite army.

Anne Warren, the mother of the future bishop, was a Catholic, but of Quaker extraction, and the father had died before the child's birth, so that young Doyle was brought into the world under circumstances, though not of indigence, still not of superfluity in worldly goods. But nature richly endowed him; and what treasures can be sought more desirable than the intrinsic power of soul which no external change can diminish, and which retains its richness, independent of the uncertainties of variable fortune! Nor was his childhood other than obscure, if we may apply the term to that state which, though humble, was illustrated by the tender care and enlightened piety of a Christian mother. His boyhood was not remarkable for those extraordinary manifestations of genius said to be discovered in the younger days of great men. No phenomena indicative of unusual fortune or success in life attended his boyish acts, although there is a tale of some careless fortune-teller having prognosticated the high position and distinguished labors which afterward rendered his name so memorable. At the age of eleven he ran the risk of being shot for his curiosity in observing, at a distance, a battle fought between the patriots of the rebellion and the English forces. His school-days commenced at Rathnavogue, where a Mr. Grace was conducting a seminary of learning to whose seats both Catholics and Protestants had equal access. Hitherto his mother had been his instructor, and there are no impressions so important or so lasting as those imparted to the infant mind by the solicitous teaching of a parent. Under her guidance, the youthful aspirations which inclined his developing reason to the ecclesiastical state of life, were fostered and encouraged, as she early perceived that the tendency of his mental faculties directed in the path of a holy vocation. In the year 1800, she placed him under the care of an Augustinian friar named Crane, who soon discovered the talents of the boy through his eagerness for knowledge, and his intensely studious habits. She died in 1802, leaving him an orphan, but with the prospect of his soon becoming a member of the Augustinian order, which he entered three years afterward. Notwithstanding that he entertained a strong repugnance to the eleemosynary practices of religious communities of begging from door to door—and this aversion he ever retained—he still selected a conventual life in preference to the more public and active labors of a missionary priest. His respect for the dignity of the priestly office was a characteristic trait in his life as bishop, and his ideas on the subject seem to have originated from that natural good taste with which he had been gifted from his infancy.

The ordeal of the novitiate passed through with fidelity, he made his vows as member of the order in 1806, in the small thatched chapel at Grantstown. The marked abilities displayed at this period induced his superiors to select him to be sent with some others to the college of their order at Coimbra, in Portugal, a well-conducted institution, and connected with the celebrated university of that place. As he was afforded all the ample opportunities held out to those attending the university lectures—a privilege accorded only to a few—his mind was immensely enriched, and what is of still greater importance, his ideas were enabled to attain a sturdiness of growth and liberality of expansion which ever afterward distinguished his writings and speeches. In his subsequent examination before a committee of both houses of parliament, he testified to the numerous advantages which were then, as now, derived from a continental education for the priesthood. In his days, indeed, it was no longer, as it had been in 1780, felony in a foreign priest, and high-treason in a native, to teach or practise the doctrines of the Catholic religion in Ireland. Still, the penal laws, although relaxed, had left their evil traces long after their name had ceased to excite terror, even if it occasioned a thrill of hatred in the breasts of those who had so long been subjected to the clanking of their fetters. It seems somewhat of an anomaly for Protestantism, which was inaugurated under the plea of freeing and enlightening the human mind, to sanction the enactment and enforce the execution of laws directly calculated to crush religious freedom, and make it criminal to educate the children of the conquered Catholics. It is, however, but one of the innumerable inconsistencies with which the histories of nations and of creeds regale us at intervals.

Whilst young Doyle was deeply engaged in drinking in from the purest and deepest springs theologic lore, and treasuring up in his capacious mind the classic and philosophic eloquence of ancient times, the sound of war disturbed his retirement. A French invasion overturned the independence of the country, and so rapid was the advance of Junot that the vessel which bore away in safety to Brazil the royal family was hastened in its departure by some shots from the conquering army. The peninsular war ensued, in which the Portuguese, aided by the English under Wellington, drove out the irreligious soldiers of the empire. The enthusiasm which inflamed the minds of the natives was taken up by the young students, and among them Doyle shouldered his musket, believing that the best way to prove one's fidelity to truth and justice is to act when action alone is effective.

Mr. Fitzpatrick does not explain the short stay made by the student in the college of Coimbra, as we find him in Ireland, in 1808, preparing for the reception of holy orders. He had concluded a good course of study, and his natural abilities must have rendered him fully competent to be admitted to the order of priesthood, which he received in 1809, in the humble, thatched chapel of his youthful days. But as there were then, to a greater extent than at present, existing prejudices against religious orders in Ireland, he was not only refused faculties, but even the preparatory examination, by Dr. Ryan, Coadjutor Bishop of Ferns. The young priest quietly remained in his convent until called, upon the recommendation of some friends who admired his talents, to the position of professor in Carlow College. Here he rendered most important services. Within its walls he spent six years most studiously occupied, both for his own advancement and for the benefit of his pupils. The advantage of procuring positions in seminaries or colleges for young priests of talent and taste for prolonged study, is easily perceived when we consider the necessity—more especially at the present day—of fitting some for the higher duties of their order—the defence and exposition of Catholic doctrines in a literary manner. Had the talents of Dr. Doyle received no cultivation more than that afforded by a superficial knowledge of theology in a rudimentary course of three years, his life would have passed in obscurity, and his eminent public services could never have been successfully accomplished. The light of genius is, indeed, a gift of nature, but the intensity of its brilliancy depends upon art and culture. Besides this, his taste for literature excited the enthusiasm, whilst it encouraged the efforts of the students. His lectures on eloquence, which had, up to that time, been considerably neglected among the Irish clergy, served as an incentive to their ardor in pursuit of that noble science, at the same time that it furnished his own mind with the inexhaustible resources which he afterward wielded with such mighty effect. We know of similar results having been attained by the late eminent Cardinal Wiseman whilst rector of the English College at Rome. The necessity of a learned clergy was scarcely ever felt as much as at the present day, when men of abilities and cultivation may be daily encountered, eager and earnest for the truth, but not ready to admit it upon insufficient or superficial grounds. This view, entertained by Dr. Doyle whilst in Carlow College, led him to inculcate the same principles to those around him.

But the scene of his labors changes, and we now approach the period of his life in which his publications procure for him that general recognition of power and virtue, hitherto accorded him in a humbler sphere of duty. By an unprecedented unanimity he was elected, in 1819, to succeed Dr. Corcoran in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. The selection was more remarkable, as in those days there were feelings of strong dislike entertained against members of religious communities, and the subject caused no slight trouble at Rome. The wise regulations of the church for the election of bishops were observed in Ireland then, as they are now. Assembled together, the clergy received the Holy Eucharist, prayed for light to direct their action, retired in silence, strengthened and enlightened, to give their voice for the most fitting subject; and the result showed in this case, that, as they had the generosity to pass over the bounds of prejudice, the Holy Ghost guided them in their deliberations. It was not a little surprising that the choice had fallen upon an Augustinian friar; but that the dignity should be conferred upon one so young—he was only thirty-two years of age—and with such universal satisfaction, went far to prove the high esteem in which he must have been held. The custom of electing elderly persons to the episcopal office is generally admitted to have traditional usage in its favor, although we do not read of our Lord having regarded age as a qualification in his apostles, and St. John is believed to have been a mere youth. Innocent III., one of the most illustrious popes that ever reigned, was only thirty-seven years of age when he ascended the chair of St. Peter. And although the youthful appearance of the new bishop was made the occasion of adverse criticism in some quarters, he entered upon his office no less deeply impressed with the truth of what St. Augustine said of the episcopate, "Nomen sit oneris, non honoris," than if he were bowed down by age.

Mr. Fitzpatrick's work exposes to us many evils that had been allowed to grow up in the diocese under the inactive government of some of Bishop Doyle's predecessors. Incompetent persons are found in every state of life, and many of the miseries by which society is afflicted arise from faithlessness or incapacity in incumbents of high positions. Energy and diligence were not characteristic of those who had gone before him, and abuses that had been tolerated by negligence, grew into evils which were magnified by their proximity to the sanctuary. But Bishop Doyle was one of those faithful ministers who felt the responsibilities enjoined upon his office, "quasi pro animabus reddituri rationem." Some customs common among the clergy were not much in accordance with ecclesiastical propriety, and it is not easy to eradicate what has been allowed to attain a long growth. It is true that the penal times had but just ceased, and the decadence in ecclesiastical discipline brought about by the dreary night of persecution, was of such magnitude as not to be quickly remedied. Still, the new bishop had brought with him into the office a thorough knowledge of the laws of the church, and a sense of the obligation of carrying these laws into execution whenever possible. These were the two principal reasons to which must be ascribed the successful issue of all his measures at reform. He called the attention of his clergy to the decrees of the twenty-fourth session of the Council of Trent, with regard to the reformation of the church, and dwelt upon the penalties to which he himself should be liable were he to neglect the enforcement of those wise regulations.

For the decency of public worship, the ornaments and linens of the altar, and everything connected with the sacred ceremonies of religion, he had the most scrupulous regard. He instituted regular visitations in his diocese, as he felt that he could not be exempted from a sinful negligence in omitting to comply with the decrees of Trent in this respect. In these visitations he discovered the sad state to which ecclesiastical discipline had fallen before his days. In one instance the vestments were found to be in such an unbecoming state that he tore them asunder. Returning next year to the same parish, he found the identical old vestments sewn together and kept in a turf-basket. To prevent a repetition, he consigned them to the flames, and as the parish priest was by no means a poor man, the wretched taste displayed by him was wholly unpardonable.

Hunting was not an unusual occupation with the clergy of those days. Practices by no means tending to increase the respect of the people for their pastors, had been allowed to accompany the marriage and funeral services of country districts, and all these claimed the diligent reformatory care of the active bishop. The office of reformer—as the very sound has to some an odious signification—is not the most envious one in the world, and it acquires a peculiarly distasteful character from those whose self-interested conduct may fall under its action. Hence the young bishop was sometimes accused of rashness in his undertaking to correct abuses of so long a standing, and the plea was set up that good and wise men had tolerated them in the past. Nor was he free from the receipt of letters of complaint, principally, though not always, from old pastors who found great difficulty in abandoning habits which their sense of right would not permit them to justify. They remonstrated with him for carrying out laws for the execution of which he was responsible. But he kindly reasoned with them on the necessity which pressed him to be faithful to his trust; and as he never urged his own feelings or his own bias as the motive of his action, but always appealed to the law of the church, he gradually effected the most beneficent results. He never used harshness, even where it might appear, if not necessary, at least justifiable, and never was he accused of disregarding the reasonable explanations of the humblest of his clergy. Law, not self; justice, not caprice, were the motives that incited him; and, guided by such principles, he confided the success of his efforts to God, and thus labored under the inspiration of the church.

The sacrament of confirmation had been but rarely administered before his time, and he frequently was affected to tears when, instead of children to receive it, there were crowds of gray-haired men and women. The education of the young had been much neglected by many parish priests, whose taste for agricultural pursuits led them to devote more time to the cultivation of farms than to the instruction of their people. One rural gentleman insisted that he could well attend to his flocks of sheep without neglecting his spiritual flock; but the bishop required that his time should be exclusively devoted to his ministry. Many justified their engagement with worldly occupations, or their inattention to their duties, by pointing to the curate, and, loudly affirming his energetic zeal, declared him fully competent to direct the parish, whilst the old man should repose from his labors and enjoy in ease the fruits of his past services in the vineyard of the Lord. The persistent labors of the bishop at length produced that good result ever to be expected from a faithful discharge of duty. Visitations were regularly conducted throughout his diocese, and the long-neglected canons of the church were reestablished, to the great satisfaction of all good priests, as well as with salutary consequences to the people.

Not less important in their results were the spiritual retreats which he inaugurated amongst his clergy. The efficient means of preserving and strengthening the spiritual life of the priesthood had been long impossible in the times of persecution; but when this obstacle was removed, his predecessors took no steps to remedy the ill effects of their omission. One thousand priests and almost every prelate in Ireland assembled at Carlow, in 1820, to avail themselves of the advantages of silence and prayer under the direction of the young bishop, who conducted the religious exercises. He had been always known as an austere man to himself, and most conscientiously attentive to even the minor duties of his ecclesiastical state, and the brilliant manner in which he guided his attentive hearers through this retreat deeply impressed them. "These sermons," (he preached three times a day,) writes Rev. Mr. Delany, "were of an extraordinarily impressive character. We never heard anything to equal them before or since. The duties of the ecclesiastical state were never so eloquently or efficiently expounded. His frequent application and exposition of the most intricate texts of Scripture amazed and delighted us; We thought he was inspired. I saw the venerable Archbishop Troy weep like a child, and raise his hands in thanksgiving. At the conclusion of the retreat he wept again, and kissed his coadjutor with more than a brother's affection."

Dr. O'Connell narrates that "for the ten days during which the retreat lasted. Dr. Doyle knew no rest. His soul was on fire in the sacred cause. He was determined to reform widely. His falcon eye sparkled with zeal. The powers of his intellect were applied to the good work with telling effect. At the close of one of his most impassioned exhortations, he knelt down on a prie-dieu immediately before me. The vigorous workings of his mind, and the intense earnestness of purpose within, affected even the outward man. Big drops of perspiration stood upon his neck, and his rochet was almost saturated." The fruits of these labors were proportionate to their intensity, for the soil was good, and needed but that cultivation, for want of which it had long lain fallow. To reform the morals of the people, he knew that the source of their moral teaching—the priesthood—must be enlightened and elevated. It seems that there can be nothing better calculated to effect a cordial coöperation of ecclesiastical duties and responsibilities than that a bishop should thus be willing and capable of teaching his clergy in learning as well as in devotion; and of impressing, by propriety of language and dignity of position, those sublime truths that should be frequently proposed to their consideration. Another great work undertaken by him was the revival of diocesan conferences, which had long fallen into desuetude. He ordained that they should be held regularly, and his own learning was a safe guarantee of their practical utility. The many intricate questions of moral theology, as well as local issues with which the clergy of a well-conducted diocese should be conversant, were usefully discussed in those assemblies with freedom and decorum. The general non-observance of statutes and laws, arising principally from the difficulties of the penal times, called for more strenuous efforts than would have been otherwise needed. The severity of penal laws against the practices of religion, or the administration of the sacraments, diminished the number of priests, who were obliged to hide themselves in the mountains, and minister by stealth and under fear of death in solitary places to the spiritual necessities of their flocks. This accounts for the statute which was passed in a synod of Kildare in 1614, allowing lay persons to administer the Blessed Eucharist to each other in cases of necessity. But those times had passed, and Dr. Doyle believed that what was then justifiably permitted could be so no longer without sin on his part. Conscientious fulfilment of duty alone directed him in these many salutary reforms introduced by him for the welfare of his people; and we dwell upon them with greater pleasure, as they evince the true character of a bishop. These, and many other beneficent changes introduced by Bishop Doyle, were but in accordance with the improved condition in which the Catholics of his day found themselves. After long and painful but finally triumphant struggles to regain some of their lost freedom, they still felt for a length of time the effects of that odious tyranny, by whose means the proud, religious ascendency of a hostile sect had long aimed at the complete subjection of the body and soul of the Catholic population. It is pleasing to find that the first relaxation of rigorous, repressive laws against the Catholic Irish was owing to the influence exercised by the American revolution upon English affairs. In 1778, Catholics were allowed to hold property as well as their Protestant fellow-citizens; and, although this was but a slight concession forced from the justice of their rulers, the Irish people derived from it an encouragement to persevere in asserting their further claims, so often deceitfully promised and unjustly withheld. These claims of his countrymen now assumed greater weight in the minds of legislators, as they became more importunately urged upon their notice by the powerful efforts of O'Connell. Bishop Doyle did not hesitate to enter the arena, and throw the weight of his mighty intellect and the no less important influence of his official position, into the contest. A remarkably vigorous exposition of the state of the question, and of the necessity of yielding to the demands of justice, published in a letter signed J. K. L., inspired new hope into his friends, and drew upon him the hostile attention of numerous opponents.

Polemics have, in our day, assumed a character quite different from that which distinguished them in former times. Much of the rancorous spirit, falsely called religious, which disturbed society, and caused even domestic life sometimes to bear an unchristian aspect, has passed away, and acerbity of feeling which irritates, whilst it never convinces, is now less frequently encountered than the milder tone of persuasive argumentation. It may be that men were then more thoroughly in earnest about religion than they are at present; but it would not be easy to maintain that earnestness must be expressed in language calculated to offend, and shown in acts intended to do violence to brotherly love. It is more probable that, with the progress of the age, men are learning more of the true spirit of religion, and are leaving off much of that virulence which poor human passion is likely to bring with it, even into the sanctuary of divine faith. One thing is certain, that a change for the better has come over the spirit which elicits religious discussion at present; and the questions that excite our interest and enlist our most serious consideration are agitated in a milder manner than in the days of Bishop Doyle, when it was rare that a religious dispute closed without abuse or vituperation, and spiritual views were not unfrequently enforced by blows.

A discussion arose between the Bishop of Kildare and Magee, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and as both were able combatants upon a field which afforded ample space for assault and defence, the contest waged was long and fierce, drawing forth the wit and sarcasm, the learning and eloquence undoubtedly possessed by both disputants. Instead of cooling by time, it warmed as it advanced, and increased in interest as it drew into its current many minor warriors eager to join in the religious fray. A spirit of domination which naturally arose from the relations between Catholics and Protestants, determined Magee to assume a loftier tone, with more pretentious, and, on that account, less tenable grounds. These circumstances rendered the humiliation of his defeat more irksome to his high position. The Marquis of Wellesley must have been an impartial judge, and at the conclusion of the politico-religious combat, he declared that Magee "had evidently got the worst of it." Several other opponents who successively assaulted "J. K. L.," were easily disposed of by his mighty pen.

Influenced by his genius and eloquent writings, the movement led by the great "Agitator" progressed toward its desired result. A change was imperceptibly coming over the spirit of the times. To retain a nation in bondage to a political or religious ascendency not founded on the good-will of the subject, must, in the long run, become impossible. As long as a people preserve unsubdued their spirit of religious or national freedom, there is no power on earth capable of frustrating their ultimate triumph. A great writer observes that the war in which violence attempts to oppress truth must be a strange and an arduous one. No matter how doubtful may be the result for a time, no matter how obscure the horizon of events, truth must in the end conquer, for it is imperishable—it is eternal as God himself. Thus was it in the struggle for emancipation in Ireland. The truth became at length generally admitted, that no civil legislation, no state authority, has a right to interfere with the sanctity of human conscience; and that the power which attempts to violate the natural gift of religious freedom transcends its limits, and is guilty of a grievous crime against the established order of Providence.

Before Dr. Doyle's entrance upon the public duties of his episcopal office, the efforts made for their emancipation by the Catholics had produced but little effect. Petitions crowded to the parliament, but they were hastily and sometimes scornfully rejected. Religious equality had been promised as a reward for the parliamentary union of both countries in 1800; but the insidious policy of Pitt proved the promise fallacious, and when the nation found itself cheated out of its legislative power, without even this slight recompense of religious freedom, deep was the indignation felt. In the movements preceding Dr. Doyle's efforts for the recovery of their rights, the Catholics were unaided by the "higher order" of their countrymen, "who sensitively shrank from participating in any appeal for redress." (Vol. I. p. 156.) The people were thus abandoned by those whom they regarded as their natural leaders, and, with some exceptions, "the Catholic clergy not only held aloof, but deprecated any attempt to disturb the general apathy." (Ibid.) But Dr. Doyle brought new energy to the combat, and, although the victory which crowned the labors of the great "Liberator" in 1829 was principally due to his own herculean powers and indomitable spirit, still the assistance rendered by the Bishop of Kildare was highly appreciated by O'Connell himself. Here it may be remarked that the Duke of Wellington is sometimes lauded for yielding to the claims of the Catholics. It is just to accord praise wherever merited; but, as the hostility of Wellington to the demands of his countrymen had been for years the greatest obstacle to their being satisfied, and as he yielded at last evidently through fear of revolution in case of refusal, it would appear that a reluctant concession, rendered when it could not be safely withheld, is but a slight groundwork upon which to erect a monument to his generosity.

It would be a long though not an ungrateful task, to trace the toilsome progress of the bishop through his many labors for the temporal and eternal welfare of his people. Throughout every page of the work before us we may perceive the deep solicitude with which he continually watched over their moral and social improvement. Wide-spread disaffection at long misgovernment had evinced itself in various species of secret societies—Ribbonmen, White-boys, Peep-o'-day men, etc.—formed either for purposes hostile to the actual state of society, or, more frequently, perhaps, for self-defence against the powerful and extensive organization of Orange-men. The Ribbonmen promised "to be true to, and assist each other in all things lawful;" but if even justifiable in their origin and object, they not unfrequently were guilty of acts which soon aroused the opposition of the clergy. Bishop Doyle found his diocese extensively overrun by numerous parties of these societies; but, as the people loved him, his disapprobation was very effectual in checking their progress. As most of the discontent arose from the collection of tithes from Catholics for the support of Protestant ministers, he reprobated the laws that were thus the cause of evils which it was their office to remove. He himself counselled his people to observe a negative opposition to the collection of these tithes, by refusing to pay them, but never to resist with violence a forcible execution of the law. To force obedience to this law was frequently a dangerous experiment. The legal claims of the parson were sometimes satisfied at the expense of the lives of his unwilling supporters. However incompatible with his character it might appear, yet it was no uncommon occurrence to witness the meek parson at the head of a military force, leading an assault on some undefended cabin or directing their manoeuvres in order to possess himself of a cow, an only pig, or even a wretched bed and bedding of a destitute family. Goaded to fury, the people would sometimes resist the soldiers, and the sacrifice of human life was often the only fruit of a tithe-collecting expedition. It may be interesting to read the following verbatim copy of a bill announcing the sale by auction of the valuable spoil secured in a successful foray by an evangelical gentleman in the neighborhood of Ballymore:

"To be soaled by Public Cout in the town of Ballymore on the 15 Inst one Cowe the property of James Scully one new bed and one gowne the property of John quinn seven hanks of yearn the property of the widow Scott one petty coate and one apron the property of the widow Gallagher seized under and by virtue of leasing warrant for tythe due the Rved. John Ugher. Dated this 12th day of May 1824."

In his celebrated examination before a committee of parliament in 1825, Dr. Doyle rendered ample testimony to the practical evils of this system. Notwithstanding the merciless exposure to which he subjected the entire tithe business, there was nothing done to alleviate the misery or remedy the sufferings with which it is so pregnant, and Ireland still labors under this, one of her most harassing calamities—the cause of her discontent and the source of her degradation. Not a little remarkable is the historical fact, that before the time of the reformation the Irish nation never consented to the system of tithes established in all other countries by the law of the church. Before the invasion there was no such thing known. After that lamentable period the English conquerors attempted to establish it as in England, but "Giraldus Cambrensis," says Doctor Doyle, "imputes it to the Irish as a crime that they would not pay tithe, notwithstanding the laws which enjoined such payment; and, now at the end of six hundred years, they are found to persevere, with increased obstinacy, in their struggles to cast off this most obnoxious impost."

A long letter addressed to his liberal friend. Sir H. Parnell, in 1831, is occupied in expounding his views on poor laws and church property. His advocacy of laws to relieve the poor drew forth his eloquent pleading in their behalf, whilst his extensive knowledge of canon law made him familiar with the ancient legislations of the church with respect to tithes. A short but characteristic passage from this letter we cannot omit:

"I am a churchman; but I am unacquainted with avarice, and I feel no worldly ambition. I am, perhaps, attached to my profession; but I love Christianity more than its worldly appendages. I am a Catholic from the fullest conviction; but few will accuse me of bigotry. I am an Irishman hating injustice, and abhorring, with my whole soul, the oppression of my country; but I desire to heal her sores, not to aggravate her sufferings. In decrying, as I do, the tithe-system, and the whole church establishment in Ireland, I am actuated by no dislike to the respectable body of men who, in the midst of fear and hatred, gather its spoils; on the contrary, I esteem those men, notwithstanding their past and perhaps still existing hostility to the religious and civil rights of their fellow-subjects and countrymen; I even lament the painful position in which they are placed. What I aspire to is the freedom of the people; what I most ardently desire is their union—which can never be effected till injustice, or the oppression of the many by the few, is taken away. And as to religion, what I wish is to see her freed from the slavery of the state and the bondage of mammon—to see her restored to that liberty with which Christ hath made her free—her ministers laboring and receiving their hire from those for whom they labor—that thus religion may be restored to her empire, which is not of this world, and men once more worship God in spirit and in truth."

In this one paragraph we have a compendious exposition of his views and aims with regard to the civil and religious freedom of his country.

When the disfranchisement of the forty-shilling free-holders—a disastrous piece of legislation—was effected in 1831, Dr. Doyle undisguisedly expressed his liberal views of individual right and liberty. One position maintained by him is somewhat remarkable, and we record it, as it accords with the opinion of our fellow-citizens.

"It is the natural right of man," he writes—"a right interwoven with the essence of our constitution, and producing as its necessary effect the House of Commons—that a man who has life, liberty, and property, should have some share or influence in the disposal of them by law. Take the elective franchise from the Irish peasant, and you not only strip him of the present reality or appearance of this right, but you disable him and his posterity ever to acquire it. He is now poor and oppressed—you then make him vile and contemptible; he is now the image of a freeman—he will then be the very essence of a slave. ... Like the Helot of Athens, he may go to the forum and gaze at the election, and then return to hew his wood and fetch his water to the freeman—an inhabitant, but not a citizen, of the country which gave him birth."

Whilst thus battling with the injustice of the times, and wielding with effect his powerful pen and eloquent voice—expounding his views of human right, reproving insidious politicians, reprobating the ungenerous legislation of the government, and refuting the calumnies by which his religion was assailed—he never lost sight of the humbler duties of his pastoral office. From the turmoil and uncertain issues of public discussion, he would revert with a sense of relief to the special care of his own immediate flock. Great was the solicitude which he so frequently expressed and always felt for the salvation of his people. "Ah!" he would exclaim, "how awful to be made responsible for even one soul! 'What then,' as St. Chrysostom says, 'to be held answerable, not for one, but for the whole population of an entire diocese!' 'Quid de illis sacerdotibus dicendum, a quibus sunt omnium animae requirendae?'" It will tell, more than volumes, to know his character as bishop, the exalted views he took of the value of a Christian soul. "And if such," he proceeds to say, "be the value of one immortal soul redeemed by the precious blood of an incarnate God, what must be the value of thousands? And oh! what the responsibility of him who has to answer not for one, but for multitudes—perhaps, ultimately, for millions! How can he reasonably hope to enter heaven, unless with his dying breath he can repeat with truth, 'Father, of those whom thou hast confided to my care, not one has perished through my fault.'" In this spirit his efforts for the education and moral improvement of his people were carried on to a successful issue. His wise restitution of the laws of the church to their proper control over everything connected with his diocese, completely removed the confusion which had long reigned. The statutes decreed for the government of his clergy were rigorously enforced. He placed upon a more intelligible basis the hitherto unsettled relations of religious orders to regular diocesan authority, and although a religious himself, he was never accused of partiality toward such communities. In fact, he found it necessary as it was difficult to induce them to undertake reforms which he deemed very much needed in some points of discipline, in order to render their services more efficient. He writes, (vol. ii. p. 187,) "I have, from time to time, suggested to men of various religious orders the necessity of some further improvement, but in vain. They seem to me the bodies of men who are profiting least by the lights of the age. I regret this exceedingly," etc. In 1822, he wrote that "to suppress or secularize half or most of the religious convents of men in Portugal would be a good work." Thus his zeal for the cause of truth and the benefit of the church led him, not only in this, but in other instances, to express opinions which not many would venture to publish. It is curious to notice his estimate of a writer to whom but few would accord the same justice. In a letter written to Mariana in 1830, he says, "You would like to know something of Fleury. Well, he is the ablest historian the church has produced; but he told truth sometimes without disguise, and censured the views and conduct of many persons, who in return gave him a bad name." As he loved, instead of fearing freedom of thought, so, too, he boldly expressed his opinions; and with all the power at his command endeavored to carry out his views. He was no mere theorist, although he theorized extensively upon two important subjects. One was upon the practicability of effecting a union between the Anglican and Catholic churches, and the other had reference to the formation of a patriarchate for Ireland. For his action upon both of these questions, arising as they did from the circumstances of his time, he has been made the object of adverse, as well as favorable criticism. Of his theological knowledge, and of the light which his own native genius threw upon every topic he touched, there can be but one opinion, nor will there be found any rash enough to doubt the honesty of his intentions. This is sufficient to exonerate him from all unbecoming charges in the minds of enlightened men, and it is only the vicious and ignorant that stoop to the imputation of evil motives. His view with regard to the union of the churches appears to have been a doctrinal submission to the Catholic Church, and a compromise in matters of discipline. The advantages to be derived from having a patriarch in Ireland, were presented by Dr. Doyle with his usual argumentative ability; and although accused of having desired the office for himself, the charge is an undoubted fabrication. Both of these projects fell through for want of cooperation; but they show the extent to which his love of truth, and love of peace, and love of increasing the power of Christianity led him. Before concluding this notice of only a small portion of his labors and of the events which attended his career, we will transcribe the opinion formed of him by the Count de Montalembert, who, in a tour through Ireland in 1832, visited Dr. Doyle and Dr. Murray. "They have inspired me," he writes, "with the greatest veneration, not only for their piety and other apostolic virtues, but for their eloquence and elegance of manners. Dr. Doyle is well known to the Catholic world as one of the most solid pillars of the true faith, and the three kingdoms will long remember his appearance at the bar of the House of Lords, where, by his eloquent exposition of Catholic doctrines, he confounded the peers of England—the descendants of those men who signed the great charter, but whose faith they have denied."

Wasted by his continual labors and incessant care for the welfare of his people, he felt the gradual approach of the last great combat to which all must ultimately yield. He might well exclaim with Saint Paul, "I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith, and now there is laid up for me a crown of glory, which the Lord shall render to me, the just Judge." "When exhausted nature apprised him that the last sad struggle was approaching, he called for the viaticum. But recollecting that his Master had expired on the hard bed of the cross, and anxious to resemble him even in his end, he ordered his mourning priests to lift him almost naked from his bed, and stretch him upon the cold and rigid floor, and there, in humiliation and penance and prayer, James of Kildare and Leighlin accepted the last earthly embrace of his God." This was in 1834, in the forty-eighth year of his age, and in the fifteenth of his episcopate.

Mr. Fitzpatrick has rendered a valuable service to his country and religion by writing the life of this eminent man. The next thing to being a great man is to propose to our people the example of great and good men, whom they should honor, and whose memory should inspire those who come after them. Ireland has many such men whose histories have not yet been written, and whose lives would serve to raise in the souls of her sons a generous emulation of their actions. An incident in the life of Dr. Doyle will show that this was a principle with which he himself was deeply impressed, and which he very emphatically expressed. A foreign monk, dressed rather picturesquely, once approached him with a very meek aspect, and said that he was a member of a community from the continent just come to Ireland bearing the relics of a man said to have been "beatified." At the same time he offered to the bishop a considerable portion of the relics. The bishop was somewhat ruffled in temper, and replied sternly: "Sir, we need not the ashes of beatified foreigners while we see the bones of our martyred forefathers whitening the soil around us."

Iona to Erin!

What Saint Columba Said To The Bird
Blown Over From Ireland To Iona. [Footnote 21]

[Footnote 21: This is a very ancient legend of the great founder of Iona, and very characteristic of his exalted patriotism and loving tenderness for all creatures, in which he was an antitype of the seraphic St. Francis.]

I.

Cling to my breast, my Irish bird,
Poor storm-tost stranger, sore afraid!
How sadly is thy beauty blurred—
The wing whose hue was as the curd,
Rough as the seagull's pinion made!

II.

Lay close thy head, my Irish bird.
Upon this bosom, human still!
Nor fear the heart that still has stirred
To every tale of pity heard
From every shape of earthly ill.

III.

For you and I are exiles both;
Rest you, wanderer, rest you here!
Soon fair winds shall waft you forth
Back to our own beloved north—
Would God, I could go with you, dear!

IV.

Were I as you, then would they say,
Hermits and all in choir who join,
'Behold two doves upon their way;
The pilgrims of the air are they,
Birds from the Liffey or the Boyne!'

V.

But you will see what I am banned
No more, for my youth's sins, to see—
My Derry's oaks in council stand.
By Roseapenna's silver strand—
Or by Raphoe your flight may be.

VI.

The shrines of Meath are fair and far,
White-winged one! not too far for thee—
Emania, shining like a star,
(Bright brooch on Erin's breast you are!) [Footnote 22]
That I am never more to see.

[Footnote 22: It is said that Macha, the queen, traced out
the site of the royal rath of Emania, near Armagh, with the
pin of her golden brooch. See Mrs. Ferguson's "Ireland
before the Conquest," for this and other interesting
Celtic legends.]

VII.

You'll see the homes of holy men
Far west upon the shoreless main—
In sheltered vale, on cloudy Ben,
Where saints still pray, and scribes still pen
The sacred page, despising gain!

VIII.

Above the crofts of virgin saints.
There pause, my dove, and rest thy wing.
But tell them not our sad complaints!
For if they dreamt our spirit faints
There would be fruitless sorrowing.

IX.

Perch as you pass amid their trees,
At noon or eve, my travelled dove.
And blend with voices of their bees
In croft, or school, or on their knees—
They'll bind you with their hymns of love!

X.

Be thou to them, O dove! where'er
The men or women saints are found.
My hyssop flying through the air;
My seven-fold benedictions bear—
To them, and all on Irish ground.

XI.

Thou wilt return, my Irish bird—
I, Colum, do foretell it thee.
Would thou couldst speak as thou hast heard
To all I love—O happy bird!
At home in Eri soon to be!

Magas; or, Long Ago.
A Tale Of The Early Times.

Chapter VII.

Are there any souls who can read the gospels as they would a common history of an heroic being? Whose frames do not thrill at the sublime words the anointed Saviour uttered? Whose hearts do not glow with an unearthly warmth at the touching incidents which mark the divine footsteps? Who see in the miracles only a temporary relief from natural ailments? Who feel in the tremendous agony of the passion only the ordinary tide of human emotion in contemplating suffering? Such as these will not sympathize with Lotis, as she rose from the cleansing waters with one sole aspiration in her heart; one firm, unchangeable purpose in her will; one object of interest for her intellect; one single love to fill every affection she was conscious of. Long ago she had sought the truth, the light, the life, the way. She possessed them now; it remained for her to form herself upon the model, to think his thoughts, to act his deeds, to live in his sight, and be crucified in him; and all because she felt that here on earth it was the only life worth having, the only love worth loving. The perversion of the world had become to her the necessary result of its having forsaken God; and because it has forsaken God, and cannot recognize truth, it will ever persecute good; and they that live godly in Jesus Christ must necessarily suffer persecution—the persecution to which a blessing is promised. Day and night did Lotis meditate on the words of God; nor was it long ere she desired to bring them into action. After the example of the Christians of Jerusalem, she had placed her resources at the feet of the Bishop of Athens, and now she placed her services under his direction. But there was one thought that haunted her, and often she uttered one word in his presence; that word was Chione.

"And what do you think can be done for Chione, my child?" asked the good bishop one day.

"I do not know, father, (so let me call you, I beg;) I do not know; but I understand her struggle now, which I did not when I sat with her on the ruins; I see what she meant when she could not give up Magas, or the applause of the world. She dreaded slavery because she was not free in soul. Would I could win the interior freedom for her by wearing the exterior chain. Father, let me beg Chione's freedom, bodily freedom; hers is not a spirit to be coerced into discipline. Surveillance only exasperates her."

"I believe it, my child, when it is not of her own choosing. Remember, however, she obeys Magas."

"Because he flatters her, fosters her pride, and maintains her in her station; besides, she loves him, and a woman easily obeys where she loves."

"She has bound herself to follow Christ."

"But she does not feel free to do it. Perhaps, were exterior freedom granted to her, she might follow what she knows to be truth. I shall never forget her appearance in the ruins of Tiryns when first I accosted her. Chione has not lost her faith."

"Faith without works is dead," [Footnote 23] said the bishop; "for works are the expression of our love, of that divine charity without which we are nothing. [Footnote 24] Though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, we become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals."

[Footnote 23: James ii. 20.]

[Footnote 24: I Cor. xiii. I, 2.]

"Chione knows this," said Lotis; "she feels it intensely; it is this feeling which occasions the struggle which she says is destroying her."

"Well, she shall have her freedom, my daughter, though I doubt its effecting a good result. It is scarcely in the redemptive order. Our Lord cured those only whose souls were turned to him. [Footnote 25]

[Footnote 25: "And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief." Matt. xiii. 58.]

Men try to penetrate the secrets of matter, and call their guesses science. The action of mind they observe not, or they would see that it obeys laws as unfalteringly as the insensate stone. A soul perfectly united to God is endowed with power that seems supernatural to those who know not that 'soul' is of divine origin, and even in its primal attributes towers above matter. The action of such a soul on one open to its influences is miraculous, as all action of grace is; but it was once Adam's privilege by conferred gift at creation; it is now the Christian's right, purchased for him by Christ. The apostles, as you know, heal those whom their shadow falls upon, not of their own power, but by virtue of the Holy Spirit that dwells in them; but the power of God thus manifests itself only when the recipient has at least some degree of recipient power, obtained by grace also. Christ is silent before his unbelieving judges, works no miracle for Herod; yet he cannot exist without grace flowing from him; but grace falling on souls who will not receive it, but hardens them the more. [Footnote 26] This is why an apostate is ever harder to reconvert than one who has never received the faith; this is why we are forbidden to cast our pearls before swine; this is why I tremble for Chione. Remorse was busy at her heart when you left her. If she listens to the voice of God thus speaking within her, she may yet be a saint; if she rejects the proffered voice, I fear, I fear the effect of grace rejected in such a mind as hers; it will demonstrate itself with no ordinary power."

[Footnote 26: "And God hardened the heart of Pharao." Exodus x. 27.]

"At the words she heard at Ephesus she fainted away," said Lotis.

"Better," answered the bishop, "better had she thrown herself at the feet of the apostle, and said simply, 'I repent me of my sin.' Of what service to her was her remorse? It stopped her eloquence, paralyzed her tongue. She could no longer mystify her hearers by vain terms of an unintelligible philosophy of which she held the key in her hand, though she would not use it. From what you have told me, it was remorse, and not repentance, she felt."

"Oh! that she might be saved, though it were as by fire," fervently ejaculated Lotis.

The bishop looked at her face beaming with heavenly charity, and the spirit of prophecy awoke within him.

"Lotis," said he, "all Christians are more or less sureties for one another, and must bear each other's burdens, even as our Master became surety for each one of us, and bore our sins upon the cross. It is a fearful burden Chione has to endure, more especially for one of her disposition. 'Twill be, indeed, a saving as if by fire, when salvation comes to her. Say, would you be willing to help her bear her burden? If the flames are kindled, and she shrinks from them, will you pass through them in her place?"

"To save her? Yes! Indeed I would! Father, I love Chione."

"Then offer yourself to God for her, my daughter, and strengthen yourself by prayer for the suffering you must look forward to. Chione will be granted to expiatory love."

......

Chapter VIII.

"Now, my Chione, we will go to Athens."

"No, not to Athens, Magas; anywhere rather than to Athens; I beg of you not to take me to Athens."

"Why, what caprice is this? Where in all the world will you find yourself likely to be appreciated so well as at Athens? What audience more intelligent, more refined, more susceptible of sublime emotions? I love Athens; you know I do, and you may judge of the depth of my love for you, that, to ensure your freedom, I have kept from it so long; but now, no one has a claim upon you save myself; so we will go to Athens."

"I thought you had set your heart on going to Rome."

"That was only when I deemed Athens was out of the question. But my—my Chione, you are free; we may go anywhere. My estates are suffering from want of my presence; besides, I will settle some of the revenues on you. You must come to Athens with me."

It was very unwillingly that Chione acceded; but what could she do? Was she less a slave now than before? Sometimes she thought she was more so; for had she gone to the Lady Damaris, resumed the practice of her religion, which clung to her inner being, although outwardly she gave no sign of faith, she knew she would have been not only freed, but placed in a position to render her independent of Magas. And why did she not do this now—why? Her fame had preceded her to the city, and she resolved to prove worthy of the reputation she had acquired. Poetry, art, mythic types, and Christian dogmas, blended in euphonic union in the discourses she delivered, while her impassioned verse thrilled every heart; everywhere she was greeted as the modern Sappho, everywhere honored as the tenth muse; and at last the acclamations of her fellow-citizens called her to the very temple of the muses in which we were first introduced to her, there to receive the crown of music, eloquence, and poesy. How could she refuse? How could she renounce the world? ... The throng was immense; not only the élite of Athens were there, but strangers came in crowds to hear the celebrated Leontium. The small temple had been somewhat injudiciously chosen, since not one half of the crowding throng could enter. The festival had been proposed as a private tribute of friendship from the most exalted citizens of Athens to their adorable muse; but Leontium (as her public name ran) was no longer a private person; it was found impossible to distance the crowds; and hastily a platform was erected outside the building in the sacred grove, that the public might be accommodated and have a chance of hearing their favorite sing the glories of Athens.

We will not attempt to describe the preparatory exercises; the beautiful intertwinings and graceful wreathings of the various myths represented on that day, when all the energies of the city seemed exhausted to impart glory to the classical allegories that were about to disappear from among mankind for ever. There was an elegance, a chastity about the performance never witnessed before, and an influence was felt impending that belonged not to the types before them. To the superior taste of Magas and Chione some of this atmosphere of exaltation was doubtless due; yet the audience felt as if something more than this was around them; as if the divinities themselves were present, and insisting on receiving the homage that for so many ages had been presented as their right.

But now it was nearly over. The walls of Thebes had risen to the lyre of Amphion, while the slow but untiring Hours had followed to its soft music the glorious chariot of Apollo; and so artfully was all contrived that the spectators could not discover by what magic the stones were moved, or the figures representing the hours supported as they moved on the mists away.

Hermes, instructing Cadmus in the art of letters; Minerva, introducing the distaff into the household; and Ceres, teaching man to sow the corn; all these had followed with appropriate poetry and music, with many others of a similar description. And then, as if to heighten the effect by contrast, came a hush, a calm, a silence; the stage was covered with clouds; the incense rendered every object indistinct; low, melancholy tones uttered at intervals, kept expectation on the stretch; then suddenly a blast of trumpets seemed to clear away the mists; and the clouds receding, disclosed Aurora opening the gates of the morning to the music of the spheres, who then passed slowly out of sight as a far more lovely vision broke upon the spectators—Venus Urania, borne by the graces into the company of the muses, descending from the skies to greet the votaries who, garlanded and wreathed, were waiting to receive her in a burst of celestial song. The illusion was complete; the daughter of Coelus and of Light was on her first appearance greeted with a tumult of applause; and as in wavy, measured movements, encircled by the graces, she floated down to earth, scattering her bright inspirations in sparks of fire upon the muses who were kindling into enthusiasm at her approach, the whole assembly caught the melody as it rose from the inspired sisterhood:

Beautiful daughter of Coelus and Light,
Coming in glory to gladden our sight.
Vision of loveliness! star of the day!
Grateful and glad is the homage we pay.
All girt by the graces, thou comest to earth;
With joy and with music we welcome thy birth.
Oh! stay, thou sweet goddess, to brighten our life,
To banish our sorrows, to still every strife.
O Venus Urania! we call upon thee,
Inspirer of gladness, of ecstasy!

The singers were the multitude; the sound of the voices of the muses, or those who personified them, was lost in the thrilling greeting which that multitude gave to their favorite—Chione.

Dressed in a dazzling robe spangled with gold, crowned with rays so artificially disposed that they seemed to emit light as she was descending, Chione came forward as the Venus Urania of the Temple.

The throng hushed as she raised her arm to speak; among the thousands there, scarce a sound was heard; the very breathing was suppressed, for fear one tone of that eloquent voice should be unheard. "My friends," she began.

Suddenly a low, piercing wail broke upon the throng, like the moan of a distressed spirit, so unearthly was the sound. Again it rang through the echoes, under ground, over head. Chione started, and the throng was awed. Then, in the fearful silence, these words were heard. Distinctly they came forth, though uttered in a wild, unearthly cadence, as if they were spoken by one of another world:

Once for silver, now for gold,
Is the Lord of glory sold!
Woe, deep woe!
Judas went to his own place;
Nor shall time the sin efface.
He must every joy forego!
For ever, woe! [Footnote 27]

[Footnote 27: It is on record that, at the first preaching of the Gospel, numerous signs, sounds, and words were uttered in the pagan temples, at the times of worship, to the confusion of the multitudes therein assembled. I leave the fact as I found it, to the construction of my readers, each one for himself!]

Every heart was chilled; Chione paled and trembled. Magas sprang to her relief. "It is but a trick of your own devising; you are paid back in your own coin. Compose yourself, it is nothing." The crowd was too dense to allow a search to be made. There was a long pause, but at length Chione was called upon to proceed. Her theme was, "The Glory of Athens—of Athens, the Civilizer of the Nations."

The tremor which was still slightly apparent in the frame of the Venus Urania when led forward by Magas, (now habited as Apollo, that he might consistently bear a part in the scene, and watch over any demonstration that should again affect the goddess he worshipped with so intense a devotion,) gave an increased interest to her appearance; the look of appeal she seemed to cast over that mighty throng, as if to claim protection from some invisible enemy of her peace, imparted an additional tenderness to the sympathies of the audience. Chione regained her courage, as she inhaled the moral atmosphere that surrounded her; she forced back the unwelcome shades of thought that had been called from their tombs, where she intended them to lie buried for ever. She gazed around. The scene at the back of the stage had been changed. The citadel of Athens had been introduced, and hovering above it was Minerva, the tutelary divinity of the place. Chione was evidently surprised; perhaps again she suspected an interruption; but Magas whispered, "By my command," and she at length made a gesture, as if to begin. There was, however, a marked change in her inspiration; she was no longer the commanding genius of the temple. It was evident to all that she was under some irrepressible, some irresistible influence. Magas looked anxious; his whole soul was bound up in Chione's success. She was his pride, his glory, his Aspasia, his Sappho. Never yet had he known her to fail; and he watched her words as if his very life depended upon them. She commenced:

"Athenians, you have asked me to speak to you of the glory of our city. Behold it! Wisdom is watching over its citadel. The glorious Minerva, issuing from the head of the immortal father of gods and men, presides over the welfare of Athens—has ever presided over it! This is our crown, this our glory. The history of this our Athens, is unlike the history of any other city in the world; for it forms a chain of glory, a long-continued tissue of renown. Her history is, a web of varied dyes, introducing characters of every degree of virtue, talent, heroism, or nobility.

"Time was, Athenians, that this beautiful land, now covered with fertile fields and richly ornamented villas; now the splendid resort of intelligence, philosophy, and science—time was, that Athens, the enlightened, the refined, the artistic; Athens, whose works of beauty will supply all time with models; Athens, whose pathways throughout the whole region round, even to the Piraeus, are adorned with statues of her illustrious sons—the poets, painters, warriors, and statesmen she has produced; Athens, within whose citadel arises the Parthenon, which would itself be the wonder of the world, were not that wonder exhausted on beholding the gigantic statue of our tutelary-goddess which it contains; time was, that Athens was a drear and sandy waste, the resort of savages who knew not the use of fire—who were clothed in skins, and lived on roots and acorns. [Footnote 28] But Minerva looked with complacency on the spot she had selected for the dwelling-place of her chosen people. She sent Theseus to Attica, to clear the land from the pirates that infested it; to enact laws, and teach the uncultured men to submit to righteous rule. It was first the law of force, though not unmixed; for men unused to government must be coerced until their powers of mind expand; until they feel what lawful government can effect; until they know that lawlessness is not true liberty. But not long was Athens ruled by one. Athenae, Queen, who loves this citadel, had other views. Her chosen city was to bear the glorious palm of an enlightened freedom.

"A deed unparalleled in the annals of nations occurred. Codrus, her king, inspired by that sublime divinity who hath care of Athens, devoted himself to destruction, that the favored city of Minerva might be saved. Codrus died! more sublime in his death than the loftiest monarch ever was in life. Who does not bow before the shade of Codrus? Who does not feel that, by his patriotism, his disinterestedness, his heroism, he laid the foundation of his country's greatness?

His death—our life!

"Bear with me; I must pause a moment here."

Music filled up that pause; but music so solemn, so grand, that the audience felt as if the spirit of the mighty dead were hovering over them. Chione resumed:

"To so great a hero, it was impossible to find a worthy successor! 'Man is not fit for irresponsible power. Too commonly he uses it but to give the reign to his own passions, while he represses in his subjects the development of those lofty qualities of soul which distinguish man from the brutes that scour our plains. No other king ever wielded the sceptre in Athens; for Minerva intended that a people should be formed, and not a single individual. She wished a body of men to rise to greatness, not a crowned monarch to acquire renown by the extirpation of millions.

"Athenae loved her children, and she gave them a law-giver whose first act relieved the poor of their burdens; released them from the oppression of the rich. Solon knew that the poor are the sinews of a nation; he knew too, that there is a point in which the crushing power of debt destroys the qualities that form the man, the free-man so dear to wisdom; and Athens shook off this oppression beneath his righteous sway. The laws of Solon shall be honored as long as rectitude itself is honored, because they recognize that principle of individual development which alone can form a great people. Particular modes of bringing out this principle may change, may pass into other modes; but the principle itself is eternal, it is worthy of Solon, worthy of the descendant of the immortal Codrus; it was a direct inspiration of that wisdom which has so unweariedly watched over the formation of the Athenian people.

"Such a principle was it to which we owe the sages and the heroes that adorn our annals. What heart does not thrill on hearing the name of Miltiades, of Themistocles, of Cimon, or Aristides? Who does not glow with rapture at beholding the works of Phidias, of Praxiteles, Apelles? Who can study with Anaxagoras, converse with Socrates, or speculate with Plato and Aristotle, nor feel the divine inspiration communicated to themselves? Who can read the annals of Xenophon and Thucydides, without feeling proud that he himself is a citizen of Athens; and which of us has not wept tears of ecstatic emotion at beholding a tragedy of Euripides or of Sophocles? What country in the world could ever boast of such a galaxy of celebrated names?

"Tell me not that these men were not all of Athenian origin. What if some few of them first saw the light in some other city than that of Athens. Not the less to Athens do they owe their genius and their fame; none the less from her did they receive their inspiration, their culture, and development. The influence of Athens is not limited to her own domain. Her great men live for ever to kindle thoughts of greatness throughout the world. Many far distant, both in time and space, will, to endless ages, love to muse with Pericles on the banks of the Ilissus, while he is planning those exquisite creations which have linked his name with all that is sublime and beautiful in human art. Many will rejoice with him as gently he sinks to rest, sustained by the sublime consciousness that, during the whole of his long career, he had never caused an Athenian to shed a tear.

"His career was for humanity, and in this he resembled Athens; for unlike the vulgar glory that crowns the conqueror's arms, the boast of Athens is that, although so many deeds of prowess attest the heroic valor of her children, yet never, never did she enter on an aggressive war for the mere sake of conquest, for the vain-glorious motive of adding by injustice another territory to her own. No, Athens has shed her benefits abroad; has made known to the nations all the virtues of the earth. She has proved herself capable of great acts, alike in war as in peace. Her genius is godlike, it is diffusive. The very site Minerva chose for her citadel betokens this destiny. Athens is compelled by circumstance to seek by peaceful commerce the corn necessary for her subsistence. The goddess gave her the honey of Hymettus, the Pentelic marble, and the silver mines of Laurion, that her eloquence might be sweet, her courage firm, and her commerce gainful; but she denied her corn, that corn which is the nutriment of the body, that, by fetching it from foreign lands, she might, in doing so, communicate to the world those sublime ideas which form the nobler nutriment of the soul.

"Thus is it that wisdom is the glory of Athens; it explains the history of the past; it affords a key to our present position.

"The mighty genius of force now bestrides the nations; it keeps down the surging emotions of half-savage men; itself, with its stoical insensibility to beauty, with its gladiatorial slaughters, betokening that it is hardly yet emerged from barbarism. Is this constrained calm to effect no purpose in the decrees of wisdom? Examine, and you will find that the glory of Athens is still increasing, even under a supposed subjection. [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: The Romans, out of reverence to letters, left to Athens a nominal freedom a long time after they had virtually subjugated her. It was not till the reign of Severus that her civilization was crushed. Chione is supposed to speak one hundred and fifty years before that period.]

"The nominal dependent refines and civilizes her conqueror. The wisdom of Athens, which, confined within its own narrow domain, could but have enlightened the inhabitants of a few cities, is now spreading over the entire earth; the words of its sages are instructing our haughty rulers; the myths of our poets are civilizing Rome. This, then, is the glory of Athens; and such glory must needs be eternal. Lands may change owners, and physical force give a momentary, a seeming nobility to a barbarian; but mind is immortal! the empire of ideas lasts for ever. Thus is Athens the civilizer of the nations.

"Sons of Athens! heirs of the philosophic ages! children of the poets! to you I need not explain how the beautiful devices which surround us are types of a higher knowledge—how many a glorious idea lies hidden under the name Minerva. The veiled Isis of Egypt, upon whose statue was inscribed, 'I am all that has been, all that shall be, and none among mortals has ever yet lifted my veil,' was, as you know, but another form of our loved Deity. Wisdom must preside at every institution designed to last. The precepts of Anaxagoras, the reveries of the divine Plato, alike instruct us in the eternity of ideas. Truth goes by different names upon this earth; it is represented by the nations under different myths, according to the conception men form of it. It requires a high intellect to contemplate truth in the abstract; to most minds it is simplified, endowed with power by being personified; hence our worship. Isis in Egypt, in Athens becomes Minerva; the veil, if not lifted, is at least rendered more transparent; and it may be that the time of its lifting is at hand. Portents of wondrous power are working in men's hearts; the principle of development evolved in Athens is becoming spread over the earth. Let us take courage. Athens is still at the head of civilization; it remains with her children that she so continue.

"Three words are awakened within my breast, [Footnote 30]
While dwelling on Athena's story;
Three words are a key unlocking the rest,
Illustrating Attica's glory.
These words proceed from no outward cause,
Within us they write their immortal laws.

"Man was created all free, all free,
Chains seen at his birth were never;
Believe it, in spite of the enmity
And folly of men put together.
I fear not the slave who has broken his chain,
'Tis the Godlike resuming his own again.

"And Virtue is more than an empty call.
It may guidance and practice be.
Though man may stumble, and totter, and fall,
He may strive for divinity.
And what unto reason doth seem unreal.
Full oft, to the child-like, doth Wisdom reveal.

"For a God doth exist; and a Holy Will
Is there still, though the human will palters;
Over time, over space, the high thought floateth still.
All glowing with life that ne'er falters;
While all things move round in unceasing change,
That spirit breathes peace through the heavenly range.

"Oh! guard well these words within every breast,
For on them rests Attica's glory;
Proclaim and observe them, with increasing zest,
They're the keys of Athena's story.
No man can e'er forfeit his inward worth.
While wisdom within to these words giveth birth."

[Footnote 30: The German student will here recognize that this song is an imitation, or rather a translation adapted to the subject of Schiller's "Drei Worte neun' ich Euch, inhaltschwer." The infidelity of Chione, like that of modern times, does not hesitate to avail itself of truths learned from Christianity, when such truths can adorn their unsound philosophy; in fact, the truth that is in it, saves their theory; error cannot stand of itself.]

Chione ceased. She had not shone as she was wont to do; she felt conscious that in palliating paganism to please the audience, she was paltering with her own conscience. When she proposed first to speak her address, she had intended to give a synopsis of the philosophy and poetry of Greece, and to avoid mythology; but the words she had heard had embittered her spirit, rendered it defiant; and half-angrily, half-sarcastically, had she uttered the sentiments we have recorded. There was not, however, the mesmeric sympathy between her and the assembled crowd that was wont to produce electric bursts of enthusiasm, albeit they agreed with the sentiments expressed. Her own enthusiasm had been quelled before commencing; she could not then communicate what she did not possess. But it had been previously arranged that she was to be crowned; she had been invited there for that purpose; therefore the figure representing Minerva ceased to hover in the air, came forward, and, to very sweet music, placed the crown on Chione's head.

Beauty, crowned by Wisdom's hand,
Reigns triumphant in the land.
Her scented dower
Is music linked to poesy,
In tones of heavenly harmony,
Attuned to earth's necessity by Eloquence,
bright power!

The pause that succeeded was filled up with throwing of bouquets and shouts of congratulation. When a lull came, and Chione was about to give a parting salute to the spectators, these words came distinctly to her ear, though in so low a tone that they were inaudible to any but herself and those close to her:

Earth's crown of glory is a crown of thorns;
Such the Saviour's head adorns,
Who died for thee.
Crowned with thorns, for thee he bled.
On the cross his life-blood shed.
All for thee!

Chione became very pale; she attempted to come forward, but fell back in the arms of her attendants; she had fainted.

Translated From The French.
The Unity Of The Human Race.

This is one of a series of popular discourses given at the Imperial Asylum of Vincennes, France, by A. de Quatrefages, member of the Institute, and Professor of Natural Science. After some preliminary remarks to his audience, he proceeds to the question, What is man? "It is not difficult to perceive that man is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, neither a plant nor a stone. But is he an animal? Not likely, when we reflect upon all his attributes.

"None of you would like to be compared to those animals who feed on grass, to the hog who wallows in the mire, nor to the dog, in whom man has found the qualities of both friend and companion; nor further, to the horse, though he were as celebrated as the famous Gladiator.

"Man is not an animal. He is distinguished above the brute creation by numerous and important attributes. We have only to consider his intellectual capacity, the power of articulation, which gives to every people a special language, the capacity to write, which reproduces language; the aid of the fine arts, to explain and materialize the conceptions of his imagination. He is also distinguished above animals by two fundamental characters which belong solely to him. Man is the only organized and living being who has the abstract sentiment of both good and evil, the only being in whom there exists a moral sense, the only one who believes in a future state, and who recognizes the existence of beings superior to himself, having influence upon him for good or evil. It is this two-fold conviction which grasps and holds the great truths which are called religion.

"At a later period I will return to these two questions of morality and religion, not as a theologian, but as a naturalist. At present I limit myself to this fact, that man, however savage he may be, shows signs of morality and religion that are not found in any animal. Consequently, man is a being apart, separated from animals by two great distinctions which are his own, and also by his incontestable superiority. There the difference ceases. With regard to his body, man is nothing more or less than an animal. Apart from some differences of form and disposition, he is no more than equal to the superior animals that surround us. If we take for comparison those that assimilate to our general form, anatomy shows us that our organs are the same as theirs; we find in them muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, that is found in man himself. Physiology, in turn, has demonstrated that, in the body of man, the organs, the muscles, the nerves, have the same animal functions.

"This fact is indisputable, taken from a purely scientific and practical view. We cannot experiment upon man, but it is possible to do so upon animals. Human physiology employs the means to enlighten us upon our organic functions. Physicians have carried to the sick-bed the result of their investigations upon animal life. Anthropology also, we shall see, has derived useful lessons from beings who are essentially our inferiors. Anthropology should descend still lower than animals to enlighten us thoroughly. Vegetables are not animals any more than animals are men; but man, animals, and vegetables are linked together in the same living organization. By this only, they are distinguished from the minerals, which are neither the one nor the other, and by certain general facts known to all.

"All organized beings have a limited duration, all are created small and weak, all grow and become strong; during a part of their existence, all decrease in energy and vitality, sometimes also in size, then die. During life, all organized beings have need of nourishment. Before dying, all produce, either by a seed or by an egg, (I speak of species, not individuals,) which is true of the species that seem to come directly from a shoot, a layer, or a graft; all proceed from a grain, or an egg. Thus, all these great phenomena, common to all living organized beings, including man as well as plants, suppose a general law for their government. Science confirms this conclusion every day, which is not an invention of reasoning alone, but is regarded as an experienced fact. Further explanations are not necessary to show the magnificent result.

"How admirable, that man and the smallest insect, that the lord of the soil and the smallest plant, are attached one to the other, by the same links, and that the entire living creation forms together a perfect harmony!

"In this communion, and in certain phenomena of this accordance with certain laws, equally common, there results one consequence upon which I would not too strongly insist. Whatever may be the questions relating to man, that we have to examine whenever these touch upon any one of the phenomena that are common to all living organized beings, we must not only investigate animal life, but also vegetable life, if we would wish to find the truth.

"When one of these questions is proposed, what can we truthfully urge in reply? We must examine man under the general laws that govern other living organized beings. If the investigation tends to make man an exception to these general laws, we shall know it is false. If you resolve the problem so as to include man in the general laws, you may be sure that you are scientific and correct. With these proofs, and these only, I proceed to the second question of anthropologists. Are there several species of men, or does there exist but one, comprising several races?

"Some explanations are necessary. Examine the designs before you, and you will discover the principal varieties exhibited in the human type. You have there individuals from all parts of the world; you see that they differ considerably in color, some in their hair, others in their size, or in their peculiar features. It behooves us to ascertain if the differences that present themselves in these human groups are those of species, or if they merely indicate the existence of races belonging to the same species.

"In order to reply to this question, you must ascertain the true significance of the words species and race. The result of the discussion depends upon these two words. Unhappily, they are often confounded and badly defined, and we become enveloped in mystery when we wish to consider them more closely. Let us then form a precise idea before entering into otherwise profitless details.

"None of you certainly confound the horse with the ass; though the horse may be no larger than the dogs of Newfoundland, or though the ass should attain the size of an ordinary horse—for example, the large asses of Poitou. You will immediately say they are different species. You will say the same if you place a dog and a wolf side by side.

"We call by the one name of dogs the different types, such as the spaniel, the greyhound, the lap-dog, the Newfoundland, the King Charles; and we are right. However, if we were to judge by the eyes only, and even after more minute observations, there is between the dogs I have named greater differences of color, proportion, and size, than between the horse and the ass. The latter have certainly more similarity between them than the types of dogs I have named.

"If I should place a black and a white water-spaniel side by side, you would call them both spaniels, though of a different color. When we examine vegetables, it is the same thing; a red and a white rose are equally roses; pears that are sold two for a penny, are the same species as those sold at twenty cents each.

"Without any doubt you have arrived at the exact conclusion of the naturalists; like them, you have resolved the questions of species and race, which at first sight seemed, for the reasons I have given, more or less confused.

"These examples fully prove that popular observation and common sense are in many things fully as reliable as the investigations of science. Were such deductions generalized into scientific language, I feel sure there would be found few if any mistakes.

"These investigations prove that animals and vegetables vary within certain limits. The dog remains but a dog, whatever may be his general form, color, or his shape. The pear is but a pear, whatever may be its flavor or the color of its skin. It is from these facts that I am led to believe that variations can be transmitted through generations. The union of two spaniels produces spaniels, the union of two mastiffs produces mastiffs. Thus, in a general manner, the result is, that beings of the same species can cease to resemble each other absolutely; moreover, take exteriorly different characters, without isolating or forming different species; as I have said, the dog remains a dog, whatever may be the modifications he presents. These are precisely the groups formed by individuals which we have spoken of as the remote primitive types of species that have formed distinct secondary groups, which naturalists call races.

"You will understand, then, what is meant in speaking of the races of beeves, horses, etc. We have domesticated but one kind of beeves, which have generated the Breton race, the great beeves of Uri, of such savage aspect, and also the gentle Durhams. We have but one kind of domestic horse, and this has given us the pony, as well as the enormous horses that are seen in the streets of London, commonly used by the brewers; finally, the several races of sheep, goats, etc., belong to one and the same species. I place this assemblage of proof vividly before you to avoid vagueness in your investigations, which would be attended with serious mistakes. I will now cite examples from the vegetable kingdom, which will be as familiar to you as the foregoing.

"Let us take the coffee-tree. Its history is quite interesting. The coffee-tree was originally from Africa. It has from time immemorial been cultivated in Abyssinia, on the borders of the Red Sea. It was not until toward the fifteenth century that the seed migrated from this sea and penetrated into Arabia, where it has been cultivated since that epoch. It is from there in particular that we get the famous Mocha. The use of coffee became common immediately. From the east it was introduced into Europe at a later period, and it was at Marseilles that it was used for the first time in France.

"The first cup of coffee that was drank in Paris, was in the year 1667. A few grains were brought over by a French sailor called Thevenot. Two years after, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Porte, under Louis XIV., gave an entertainment to some friends of the king, where it was introduced, and the beverage pronounced delightful. The use of coffee, however, did not become general in France until the eighteenth century. You see, then, that coffee has not been very long in use. It was almost a century and a half before it became general among Europeans.

"During this time Europe became tributary to Arabia for this luxury. All the coffee that was used in Europe came from Arabia, and particularly from Mocha. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century the Dutch tried to import it to Batavia, one of their Indian colonies. They succeeded. From Batavia, some plants were sent to Holland, and planted in heated earth. This also proved a success.

"One of these plants was carried to Paris in 1710, and was placed in one of the beds of the Jardin des Plantes. It flourished, and supplied numberless plants. Toward 1720 or 1725, a French marine officer named Captain Destiaux, thought that, as Holland had cultivated coffee in Batavia, it could also be acclimated in the French colonies in the Gulf of Mexico. At the moment of embarking for Martinique he took three plants from the Jardin des Plantes, and carried them with him. The voyage was long and impeded by head-winds. Water becoming scarce, it became necessary to put the crew upon short rations. Captain Destiaux, like the others, had but a small allowance for each day, and this he shared with his coffee-plants. Notwithstanding all his care, two of them died in their transit. One only arrived safe and sound at Martinique. Planted immediately, it prospered wonderfully, and from it have descended all the coffee-trees in the Antilles, and in South-America.

"Thirty years after, our western colonies exported millions of pounds each year. You see that the plant, starting from Africa, reached the east, the extremity of Asia, then America and the west. It has consequently made almost the tour of the world. In this long passage it has changed.

"Laying aside the plant that we are not familiar with, let us take merely the grain. It is not necessary to be a planter to distinguish its different qualities and their provinces. No one will confound the Mocha with the Bourbon, the Rio Janeiro with the Martinique. Each grain carries in its form, in its proportions and aroma, its extraction, so to speak.

"From whence came these changes? We cannot certainly explain the why or the wherefore, and follow rigorously the relation of cause and effect; but in taking these phenomena together, it is evident that these modifications result from the differences of temperature, climate, and cultivation.

"This example, taken from the vegetable kingdom, shows us that by transporting the same vegetable to different places, and subjecting it to different culture, diverse races are obtained.

"Tea that was transported to South America several years since presents the same results.

"Now take an example from among the animals. You know that the turkey is a native of America. Its introduction into Europe is quite recent.

"In America the turkey is wild; and there, in the condition of its natural existence, it presents several characteristics which distinguish it from the domestic bird. The wild turkey is beautiful. Of a rich brown color, its plumage presents the reflections of blue, copper, and gold, making it truly a beautiful ornament. It was on account of its plumage that it was first brought to France. No one dreamed of eating it, and the first one that was served upon a table in France, was in the year 1570, and upon the occasion of the nuptials of King Charles IX.

"When found to be such a luxury, it was considered too good to be merely looked at, and it passed from the court to the farm-yard, from farm to farm, from east to west, from north to south. At this present time it is an article of commerce all over France.

"In going from farm to farm, and from country to country, this bird has sustained different conditions of existence, nourishment, and temperature, but never a continuation of its primitive condition that was natural to it in America. The result is, that it has changed, and at this present time the turkey in France bears no resemblance to its savage source. In general, it is smaller, and its rich plumage has undergone a marked change. Some are yellow, others white, some mixed with black, gray, and yellow. Almost all the localities devoted to raising the fowl have caused several new varieties, which have transformed them into races.

"To have thus changed their habits so as to lose resemblance to their first parents, are our French fowls any the less descendants of the wild turkeys of America? Are they less the brothers, or cousins, if you like the term better? Have they ceased to be of the same species? Certainly not!

"That which is characteristic of the turkey is also true of the rabbit. The wild rabbit lives around and about us, on our downs, and in our woods. It resembles our domestic rabbits but little. Among the latter you will see the large and the small, the smooth-haired and the silky; the black and the white, the yellow and the gray, and the mixed. In a word, this species comprises a great number of different races, all constituting one and the same kind with the wild races we see around us. From these facts, which I could multiply, we can deduce an important consequence to which I call your attention. A pair of rabbits left unmolested in a field, would, in a few years, people entire France with their descendants. We have seen how the single coffee-plant, carried by Captain Destiaux, has propagated all the plants now found in America.

"The wild turkeys and their domestic descendants, the wild rabbits and theirs, reduced to captivity, could then be considered by naturalists as all proving equally their descent from one primitive pair.

"This is the secret of species. Having always before our eyes numbers of single groups of animals or vegetables, for one reason or other we hardly consider them as descendants of one only primitive pair; we call what we see a species; if there are differences observable among these groups, they are the races of this species.

"Observe that, in my explanations, I have not given for a certainty the existence of one primitive source for rabbits and turkeys. I do not affirm the fact, as neither observation nor experience—the two guides we must follow in science—teaches anything in this regard. I simply say, all are as though descended from one only primitive pair.

"In summing up the question of species and race, it is not difficult to understand nor to believe, when we know the savage type, and have historical authority which permits us to attach to this type the groups, more or less different, according to their domestication. But when we are ignorant of the savage type, and in want of historical authority, the question becomes extremely difficult at first, because the differences we find in one and the other, and above all, in the different groups, could hardly be considered other than such as characterize different species.

"Happily, physiology comes then to our relief. We find in this science one of those grand and beautiful general laws, which holds and maintains the established order, and which we admire the more we study it. It is the law of crossing, which governs animals as well as vegetables, and is, consequently, applicable to man himself.

"We understand by the term crossing, all unions effected between animals belonging to different species or to two different races. The result of the unions obeying these laws is, that if the animals of different species unite, in the majority of cases the union is barren.

"Thus, for example, it has been tried a million of times all over the world, to effect a union between rabbits and hares. It is said to have succeeded twice.

"Much doubt is cast upon this operation by the testimony of a man of undoubted talent, habituated to experiments, who believed these unions to be possible. Though availing himself of all possible means of proof, he was not more fortunate than his predecessors, Buffon and the brothers Geoffrey St. Hilaire. Thus, the rabbit and the hare, though presenting a great conformity in appearance, cannot reproduce. Such is the general result of crossing two different species.

"In a few cases, the union between two different species may be fruitful, but the offspring cannot reproduce. For example, the union between a horse and an ass. The product of this union is the mule. All the mules in the world are the descendants of the ass and the mare. These animals are so numerous in Spain and South America that they are preferred to horses, on account of their great strength and powers of endurance. The genet, which is less desirable because it is not so robust, is the fruit of the inverse crossing of the horse and the female ass. The genet, no more than the mule, can reproduce. If one or the other is desired, of necessity recourse is had to the two species. In extremely rare cases, fecundity remains among some of their descendants, but it diminishes gradually from the second generation down to the third, fourth, and fifth. The same result is shown in the union of the canary bird. I could here accumulate a crowd of analogous details. Above all, two great general facts appear that comprehend all, and are the expression of the law; they are that, notwithstanding the accumulated observations of years, made from experiments on certain species, not a single example is known of an intermediate species being obtained by the crossing of animals belonging to two different species.

"This general fact explains how order is maintained in the actual living creation. Were it otherwise, the animal and vegetable world would have been filled with intermediate groups, passing from one to the other insensibly, and in the confusion, it would be impossible for naturalists to recognize them. The general conclusion to draw from these precedents is, that infecundity is the law of union between animals of different species.

"Unions are always more fruitful when between two animals of the same race. Their descendants are as fruitful as the parents and the grandparents, where pains are taken to preserve the race pure, and to prevent strange blood from debasing it.

"When, on the contrary, a union is effected between two different races belonging to the same species, producing a mongrel race, the contrary takes place.

"There is no difficulty in obtaining a mongrel race—the result of a crossing of races; but the difficulty is when there is a pure race, and it is desirable to have it maintained, that great care is needed to prevent strange blood from changing it.

"Races crossed by mongrels—that is to say, by animals of the same species, but belonging to different races, multiply around us. There are the dogs in the streets, the cats of the alleys, the coach-horses; all beasts among whom the race is undecided in consequence of crossing indiscriminately, their characteristics becoming confounded.

"Far from endeavoring to obtain cross races, men who are occupied in raising stock, also bird-fanciers, know with what care they endeavor to preserve the purity of the races they keep. This is the general fact, and the result is, that infecundity is the law of unions between animals belonging to different races.

"This is the fundamental distinction between species and race. This distinction ought to be the more known and considered, as it is borrowed from experience.

"When there are two animals, or two vegetables, of whom we are uncertain as to whether they are two distinct species, we have but to observe if their union is fruitful; and if this quality attaches to their descendants, we can then affirm that, despite the differences that separate them, they are the races of the same species. If, on the contrary, their offspring diminishes in a remarkable manner at the end of several generations, we can then, without hesitation, declare them to belong to distinct species. In citing these examples, I have not overlooked the subject of my discourse, or the question at its commencement.

"In referring to the designs before our eyes, they show us that between the human groups the differences are marked enough, though to all appearance less considerable than they appeared at first. We do not know the types, or the primitive types, of the several groups.

"When we meet with one or several men presenting the characteristics of these types, and we cannot recognize them in spite of historical explanations, we are led to judge by our eyes. Without taking man himself into account, we cannot decide if these several differences that present themselves in the human family are those of race or of species; if man can be considered as having had but one primitive source only, or if he should have been derived from several primitive sources.

"I have said before, and repeat again, man is an organized and living being. Under this head he obeys all the general laws to which are attached all organized and living beings; he obeys, consequently, the law of crossing. He must then apply this law to ascertain if there is one or several species of men. Take, for example, the two types farthest removed—those which seem more separated than the others by the greatest differences—namely, the white and the black.

"If these types really constitute distinct species, the union between these species should follow the proof that we have seen characterize the unions between animals, and vegetables, of different species. They should be unfruitful in the majority of cases, or nearly so. Fecundity should disappear at the end of a short period, and they could not form intermediate families between the negroes and the whites. If these are only the races of one and the same species, then unions, on the contrary, should be quite fruitful, and fecundity should be found among their descendants, and they should form intermediate races.

"These facts are decisive, and admit of no doubt.

"For three centuries the whites, par excellence, the Europeans, have achieved, so to say, the conquest of the world. They have gone everywhere. Everywhere they have found local races who have borne them no resemblance. Whenever they have crossed with them, these unions have been fruitful; more so than with those indigenous to themselves.

"Man, from the result of the institution of slavery—which happily has never stained the soil of France—has transported the negro everywhere; everywhere he has crossed with his slaves, and everywhere they have formed a population of mulattoes. Wherever the negro has crossed with local groups or families, there has arisen an intermediate race, who in character manifest their two-fold origin. The whites have finally crossed with the mongrels of all origins, and the result is, that in certain quarters of the globe—particularly in South America—there is an inextricable mixture of people, comparable, under the class, to the dogs in our streets and the cats of our alleys.

"The rapidity with which these mongrel races cross and multiply is really remarkable. It is scarcely three centuries—hardly twelve generations—since Europeans penetrated into different parts of the world. It is estimated that already the number of mongrels resulting from the crossing of whites with natives, is a seventieth of the whole population of the globe. Experience is indisputable, if we even deny modern science, or at least, wish to make man an exception to all living and organized beings. We must admit that all men form but one species, composed of a certain number of different races; consequently, all men can only be considered as having descended from one primitive pair.

"We arrive at this conclusion in despite of all kinds of dogmatical, theological, philosophical, and metaphysical considerations. Observation and experience alone, applied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in a word, science, conducts us to the conclusion, there exists but one species of man.

"This result, I do not fear to say, is of great and serious importance; for it creates in our minds an idea of the universal fraternity of science and reason, the only schools that many persons recognize at this present time.

"I hope that my demonstrations will have convinced you; meanwhile, I am not ignorant, and you all know, that anthropologists differ. There are among my contemporaries a number of men, even of great merit, who believe in the plurality of the human species. You may possibly come into contact with them. Listen attentively, then, to the reasons they will urge to make you see with their eyes. You will find that their reasonings all tend to prove that there is too great a difference between the negro and the white for them to be of the same species. In reply, state that between the black and the white spaniel, the lap-dog and the mastiff, there exist greater differences than exist between the European and the African. Yet these animals are all dogs. They may argue, perhaps, that man, whatever may have been his characteristics, could not have generated both blacks and whites. Then ask why the wild turkey, whose origin, and that of its ancestors, we are acquainted with, and the wild rabbit, which we find everywhere, could have generated all our domestic races?

"We cannot, I repeat, explain perfectly the how and the wherefore; but what we know is, that the fact exists, and we shall find a general explanation in all states of existence—in all conditions of people.

"It is not, then, surprising that man presents, in the different groups, the differences herein depicted; man who trod the earth long before the turkey and the rabbit; man, who for centuries has existed upon the surface of the globe, submitting to the most diverse and opposite conditions of existence, multiplying again the causes of those modifications by his manners and habits, by his ways of living, by more or less care in his own preservation; man, finding himself in more marked and varied conditions than those sustained by the animals we have quoted. If anything surprises us, it is that the distinctions are not more considerable.

"In turn, ask the polygenists—as those savans are called who believe in the multiplicity of the human species—how it is that when the white man locates in any country, from the antipodes, if you will, or from America or Polynesia—that if he unites with the natives, who differ the most completely from him, these unions are fruitful, and that, above all, there remains traces of this alliance in producing a mongrel race?

"If you press the question more closely, you will find them denying the truth of species; by so doing, placing themselves in contradiction with all naturalists, botanists, or zoologists, without exception; consequently, with all the eminent minds who have followed in the wake of Buffon, Tournefort, Jussieu, Cuvier, and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who made the animal and vegetable kingdoms their study, without discussion, or dreaming of its connection with man. In agitating these doctrines, polygenists place themselves in opposition to the most firmly established science. You will hear them declare that man, above all, is an exception; that he is guided by laws peculiar to himself; and that arguments deduced from the study of animals and plants, are not applicable to him. Then reply that, in the name of all the natural sciences, they are certainly in error, and that it is an impossibility that a living and organized being can escape the laws of organization and of life, having a body fortified against the laws that govern inorganic matter; that man, to be living and organized, obeys, under this title, all general laws, and those of intersection like all the others. The conclusion that we have attained is, then, legitimate, and the nature of the arguments employed to combat them, is a proof the more in its favor.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

A certain brother was praised in Abbot Antony's presence. He went to visit him, and tried to see whether he would bear mortification; and finding that he could not, he said to him: "Thou art like a house which is fair to the eye on the outside, but within hath been despoiled by robbers."

St. Synclitica said: "As a treasure which is exposed is quickly spent, so, also, is every virtue which is made public soon reduced to nothing. For as wax melteth before the face of the fire, even so doth the soul waste away with praises, and lose the firmness of virtue." Again, she said: "As it is impossible that the seed and shoot should exist at the same time, even so those who enjoy the glory of this world are unable to bear heavenly fruit."

A certain brother said to Abbot Pastor: "What shall I do, for when I sit in quiet I lose my spirits?" The old man replied, "Neither despise nor condemn any one, nor cast obloquy upon him, and God will give thee rest."

Abbot Antony said: "There are persons who wear away their bodies by fasting; but because they have not discretion, they are far distant from God."

A certain old man said: "If thou art ailing in body, do not lose thy spirit; for if the Lord God desireth thee to become sick, who art thou that thou shouldst be impatient under it? Doth he not provide for thee in all things? Canst thou live without him? Be patient, therefore, and beseech him to give what is expedient for thee, that is, to do whatsoever may be his will, and to sit in patience, eating thy bread in charity."

Holy Week In Jerusalem.

The sacred offices of the Catholic Church, wherever celebrated, are admirably calculated to increase devotion, and render intelligible the different events of the ecclesiastical year. In every land the ceremonies of the great week which ends the season of Lent have deep interest to all the faithful, since they portray the chief events of redemption. These annual commemorations of the passion of Christ have, however, an added solemnity and power in the two great cities of religion, Rome and Jerusalem. In the first, the vicar of our Lord takes part in the holy rites; and, in the second, the whole service is more impressive than elsewhere; for the great events here occurred, and the remembrance of them is made, year by year, in closest proximity to the spot where they took place. It is hazarding little to say, that nowhere on earth does the office for holy week have the deep solemnity which marks it in Jerusalem, for the reason just given. While the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary are followed with great exactness, several things peculiar to the place have an interest which may render a description of them worthy of attention.

On the morning of Palm Sunday, 1866, the writer of this sketch went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to be present at the benediction of the palms by his excellency the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The palms, noble branches, seven feet in length, fresh and green, are brought every year from Gaza, a little city about eighteen miles distant. Tied in bundles of suitable size, they were placed within the most holy sepulchre, the patriarch being outside the sacred place until the time for sprinkling them with holy water and incensing, when he entered for that purpose. The benediction completed, the distribution of the palms took place, and the long procession began. Chanting the antiphons, the clergy and laity went twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then passed into the Latin chapel.

The solemn Mass, to be celebrated by the patriarch, was to begin immediately. The holy sepulchre, being about six feet square, is, of course, much too small for that purpose, and therefore a temporary altar of large size was promptly set up in front of the sacred tomb. While the attendants were preparing and decorating this, in compliance with an intimation given early in the morning, I went into the most holy sepulchre, and offered the Divine Sacrifice—it being the third time I had been privileged to say Mass in that holiest of places. To me it is one of the most memorable things in life, that this happiness should, at such a time, have been mine—that a simple priest could say Mass in "the new tomb of Joseph, which he had hewn out of the rock," while the patriarch was officiating outside the sacred place.

On Wednesday, the office of Tenebrae was said in the church. The patriarch was present and a large number of priests, friars, seminarians, and choir-boys, and many of the laity. The service was very solemn, and the music good. The priests were seated in front of the holy sepulchre, and the triangular candlestick was placed at the right hand of the door leading to the tomb. The chanting of the Lamentations was most impressive; and when the words, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum!" were uttered, it seemed that this plaintive entreaty even now could be addressed with fitness to the city that once was full of people, but is solitary, and made tributary to her enemies. There was a wild pathos and deep earnestness in the chant when the summons to turn to the Lord God was made, as if the singer knew that to-day there is need for the city to listen and obey. Jerusalem is in the power of the followers of the false prophet of Mecca; schismatic Christians outnumber the Catholics; the Jews know not the Lord their God; and the ways of Sion mourn. Would that the expostulation could be heard by all, that they might be perfectly united as a company of brethren, having the same faith and the same worship!

In the afternoon, the column of the flagellation of Christ was exposed for an hour, or two, by removing the iron grating from the front of it. As is well known, a portion of the column is in Rome, in the church of Saint Praxede. The fragment here is only about one foot high, and of the same diameter. It is kept in the Latin chapel, in a recess over an altar named after it, and cannot be seen during the year, as there is little light in the chapel, and that comes through a window high above and nearly over the altar. A popular devotion is to pray in front of the column, and then touch it with a rod, about twenty inches long, having a brass ferule or cap on the end; this ferule is kissed on the place which had touched the stone. It being impossible to reach the pillar by the hand through the grating, this method has been contrived to satisfy the devotion of those who are anxious to salute with reverence all the objects and places connected with the passion of our Lord. On Thursday, at five o'clock, we went down to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as the office was to begin early. We waited nearly an hour, in a dismal morning, until it pleased the Turkish door-keeper to come and unlock the portals. While standing here, among other subjects for consideration, was the evident fact that Christians desiring to celebrate the divine office, in the holiest week of the year, and in the most sacred place on earth, were compelled to delay the fulfilment of their wishes until permission had been given by a Mohammedan. When we were admitted, the services were long, occupying five and a half hours. The holy oils were consecrated. At the end a procession was formed, and the blessed sacrament was carried twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then was placed in a repository which stood in the tomb where our Lord had lain centuries ago.

At one o'clock, the Mandatum, or ceremony of washing the feet of the pilgrims, was performed by his excellency the patriarch in front of the most holy sepulchre. He gave to each of the pilgrims a wooden cross, about seven inches long, roughly made, and having spaces under bits of pearl for relics from the stations of the Via Dolorosa. Of the many objects of interest brought home from the Holy Land, there is scarcely any one valued more than this, because of the time, place, and occasion when it was received.

The office of the Tenebrae began at three o'clock, as on the day before. Nothing can surpass in solemnity and deep impressiveness the chantings of the Lamentations in this place. The profound desolation of the soul of the prophet as he uttered the sad words is fully expressed and realized; and the remembrance of the calamities which have so frequently befallen Jerusalem, and even now are her portion, gives bitterness to the insulting demand, "Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth?"

On Good Friday the patriarch officiated again in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The passion was sung on Calvary by three chanters, one reciting the narrative by Saint John, another the words of our Lord, while the third sung the remainder. The voice of the priest who chanted the words of Jesus was gentle and sad, and so like what we may imagine to have been that of our Lord, as to become painful and oppressive. When the ejaculation, consummatum est, had been made, the first chanter went to the place where the cross had been set up on which Jesus died, and kneeling there, in a low voice uttered the words, et inclinato capite, tradidit spiritum.

The prayers were chanted in front of the altar of the crucifixion, which belongs to the Catholics, and is at the place properly called of the crucifixion, as being that where our Lord was nailed to the cross; it is to the right, and about twelve feet from the spot where the cross was set up. The unveiling of the cross, at the chant, "Ecce lignum crucis," was done here also; and, when the crucifix was laid on the pavement in front of the altar, it covered the stone which marks the locality where our Lord was fastened to the tree. The veneration of the cross at such a time and place was deeply impressive. After the patriarch, the priests, monks, and laity, having put off their shoes, came in their order, and kissed the feet of the image of the Redeemer.

Wishing to spend as much of Good Friday on Calvary as was possible, I returned to the church in the afternoon, and sat for a long time on the floor, leaning against the large square pillar, within ten feet of the spot where the great oblation was made. While there, I meditated and prayed as well as was possible under the circumstances. For many years the Catholics have had exclusive possession of the church during the last three days of holy week; and accordingly, when the faithful had been admitted, the doors were locked, and the sacred offices performed in peace, free from the annoyance of the crowd which generally fills the edifice. Today, however, on returning, I found the doors open, and every one allowed free access. Many who were not Catholics were now present, and among them were five or six English travellers who were out sight-seeing. Accompanied by their dragoman or interpreter, they came on Calvary, and looked around with idle curiosity. One of them, had he been alone, would probably have knelt down and prayed; but, being with his friends, he only bent one knee, and bowed his head a moment at the place where the cross had been set up. The others of the party, evidently, did not believe this to be the spot of the crucifixion. They were more attracted by the gold, silver, and diamonds on the image of the Blessed Virgin, on the little altar of the Dolors, than by anything else, and for some time admired the brilliancy of these as a candle was held near, and talked of them as the most interesting objects. One glance at the place where the Lord died was enough for them; and when they went away, it was a relief to find the chapel again occupied by those who came to worship. People who have no faith should not visit the Holy Land. If they do, they derive little benefit themselves, and give great disedification to Christians of every name.

It was now toward the close of the day. Some persons, chiefly Greeks, were praying on Calvary, when a Turkish officer came up, and made signs for them to depart. Unwilling to do so, they remained for some time, when he summoned several soldiers who, with muskets, came up to enforce obedience to his commands. They walked slowly around the chapel, close to the wall; and then the people, seeing that they must go, quietly arose and descended. I have little doubt that the church was cleared in order to prepare for the solemn procession in the evening. Although the soldiers behaved with as much decorum as possible, it was a sad sight for Christians to find themselves driven from Calvary on Good Friday by Turks, and it was the bitterest thing experienced in Jerusalem.

There is always a company of soldiers on duty when any service of unusual interest takes place in the church. They are there by request of the French Consul, who is the representative of the European protector of the Holy Land, and are designed to preserve order and add to the display. Although the church covers a large area of ground, there are no spaces of great extent; and thus the presence of men to keep order is necessary. It is recorded with pleasure that, during a residence of two months in the holy city, I saw no act of incivility, nor even a rude look, on the part of the soldiers. The Greeks and Armenians, not to be excelled by Catholics, ask for the soldiers on occasion of their solemnities; and thus, the court of the church, and the edifice itself, are not unfrequently occupied by the military.

In the evening, the patriarch and clergy, with a crowd of laity, assemble in the church for the great procession which is made but on this day. The sacred building was filled to its utmost capacity; but, owing to the perfect arrangements made, the long service was gone through without the least irregularity or embarrassment. There were seven sermons on the passion, in as many different languages, by priests from the nations whose vernacular they spoke. The office began in the Latin chapel, and the first sermon, delivered with much fervor and pathos, was in Italian. When this had been concluded, the procession was formed. As it moved from one station to the next, verses of the Miserere were sung. One of the Franciscan brothers, carrying a large crucifix, led the procession, an acolyte being on either side of him. At the place of the division of the garments of Christ, the sermon was in Greek—at that of the mocking, in another Eastern language. When we had climbed the stairs of Calvary, and were at the place of crucifixion, the cross was laid on the ground, while the sermon in German was preached. Then the crucifix was taken from this place, where our Lord was once nailed to the wood, and carried to that where Christ died. The sermon at this place was in French, and was preached by the leader of the French caravan of pilgrims, a venerable ecclesiastic. When the discourse was finished, several priests came to take the body down from the cross. The crown of thorns was first removed, very slowly, and with great reverence. The nails were then tenderly drawn from the hands; and, as each was removed, the arm of the figure, having joints at the shoulders, was brought down to the side of the body. The feet were, in like manner, disengaged from the nail; a sheet passed under the arms, and the body lowered to the altar, and laid on fine linen. Holding the corners of this cloth, four priests slowly carried the figure down the stairs to the stone of unction, where the patriarch strewed myrrh over it, and sprinkled rose-water. The sermon was now preached in Arabic by the Franciscan curate of the Church of the Nativity, at Bethlehem, and was delivered in a most energetic manner. Of the seven sermons preached, it was probably the one understood by the largest number of those present. Finally, the body was carried to the most holy sepulchre, and laid in the same place where once reposed the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. Here the sermon was in Spanish, in compliment to that nation of Catholic renown; and, when it had been finished, the procession went to the Latin chapel, whence it had started, and the service of the day was over.

It will be readily understood that the ceremony of taking down from the cross, and carrying the image of our Lord to the tomb, was intended to be a representation of the manner in which the deposition took place on the day of the earth's redemption. It was a most powerful sermon, reaching the heart through the sight. By it we were carried back eighteen hundred years. Standing on Calvary, we were looking on him whose arms were stretched out on the cross, as if, in his infinite love, he would embrace all mankind. We saw him dying that we might live, and dead that we might be ransomed from the grave. No word was spoken, as good Father Jucundino came with pincers to remove the crown of thorns, which he did in such a devout manner, as to make us feel that we were witnessing the great transaction itself. The power and impressiveness of the whole ceremony were such as to render the bystanders awestruck and faint. A scene like this it is impossible to forget, and neither pencil nor words could produce a similar result.

On Holy Saturday I prayed a long time in the sepulchre, where our Lord had lain, as on this day. To be on Calvary on Good Friday, and in the Tomb on Easter eve, had been the desire of my heart. With the realization of such a wish, any one should be content; for he has a privilege granted to but few whose homes are distant from the Holy Land. In the afternoon, the daily procession was made with solemnity, the patriarch and many priests and laymen being present. The pilgrims from Europe were also in the train.

Easter-day was the last of my sojourn in the holy city. Many priests wished to say Mass in the holy sepulchre, some of whom had not yet had that privilege. I said Mass on Calvary, for the last time, that day. During the day the shrines were visited, and the tomb was now indeed the place of the resurrection. "Surrexit, non est hic." Yes! the grave is empty, and death hath no more power over him who was once here but is risen and gone. We see the place where the Lord lay. His day of victory has come, and the triumph over death and hell is complete. The tears of the Christian are dried, and the joy of the Paschal time begins.

Nellie Netterville;
Or, One Of The Transplanted.

Chapter I.

The stream which divides the county of Dublin from that of Meath runs part of its course through a pretty, rock-strewn, furze-blossoming valley, crowned at its western end by the ruins of a castle, which, in the days of Cromwell, belonged to one of the great families of the Pale—the English-Irish, as they were usually called, in order to distinguish them from the Celtic race, in whose land they had cast their fortunes.

A narrow, winding path leads from the castle to the stream below, and down this there came, one cold January morning, in the year of the great Irish "transplantation," a young girl, wrapt in a hooded mantle of dark cloth, which, strong as it was, seemed barely sufficient to defend her from the heavy night fogs still rolling through the valley, hanging rock and bush and castle-turret in a fantastic drapery of clouds, and then falling back upon the earth in a mist as persistent, and quite as drenching, as an actual down-pour of rain could possibly have proved. Following the course of the zigzag stream, as, half-hidden in furze and bramble, it made its way eastward to the sea, a short ten minutes' walk brought her to a low hut, (it could hardly be called a house,) built against a jutting rock, which formed, in all probability, the back wall of the tenement. Here she paused, and after tapping lightly on the door, as a signal to its inmates, she turned, and throwing back the hood which had hitherto concealed her features, gazed sadly up and down the valley. In spite of the fog-mists and the cold, the spot was indeed lovely enough in itself to deserve an admiring glance, even from one already familiar with its beauty; but in those dark eyes, heavy, as it seemed, with unshed tears, there was far less of admiration than of the longing, wistful gaze of one who felt she was looking her last upon a scene she loved, and was trying, therefore, to imprint upon her memory even the minutest of its features. For a moment she suffered her eyes to wander thus, from the clear, bright stream flowing rapidly at her feet to the double line of fantastic, irregularly cut rocks which, crowned with patches of gorse and fern, shut out the valley from the world beyond as completely as if it had been meant to form a separate, kingdom in itself; and then at last, slowly, and as if by a strong and painful effort of the will, she glanced toward the spot where the castle stood, with its tall, square towers cut in sharp and strong relief against the gloomy background of the sky. A "firm and fearless-looking keep" it was, as the habitation of one who, come of an invading race, had to hold his own against all in-comers, had need to be; but while it rose boldly from a shoulder of out-jutting rock, like the guardian fortress of the glen, the little village which lay nestled at its foot, the mill which turned merrily to the music of its bright stream, the smooth terraces and dark woods immediately around it, the rich grazing lands, with their herds of cattle, which stretched far away as the eye could reach beyond, all seemed to indicate that its owner had been so long settled on the spot as to have learned at last to look upon it rather as his rightful inheritance than as a gift of conquest. Castled keep and merry mill, trees and cattle and cultivated fields, the girl seemed to take all in, in that long, mournful gaze which she cast upon them; but the thoughts and regrets which they forced upon her, growing in bitterness as she dwelt upon them, became at last too strong for calm endurance, and throwing herself down upon her knees upon the cold, damp earth, she covered her face with both her hands, and burst into a passionate fit of weeping. Her sobs must have roused up the inmates of the hut; for almost immediately afterward the door was cautiously unclosed, and an ancient dame, with a large colored handkerchief covering her gray hairs, and tied under her chin, even as her descendants wear it to this hour, peeped out, with an evident resolve to see as much and be as little seen as possible in return, by the person who had, at that undue hour, disturbed her quiet slumbers. The moment, however, she discovered who it was that was weeping there, all thoughts of selfish fear seemed to vanish from her mind, and with a wild cry, in which love and grief and sympathy were mingled, as only an Irish cry can mix them, she flung her strong, bony arms around the girl, and exclaimed in Irish, a language with which—we may as well, once for all remark—the proud lords of the Pale were quite conversant, using it not only as a medium of communication with their Irish dependents, but by preference to English, in their familiar intercourse with each other. For this reason, while we endeavor to give the old lady's conversation verbatim, as far as idiom and ideas are concerned, we have ventured to omit all the mispronunciations and bad grammarisms which, whether on the stage or in a novel, are rightly or wrongly considered to be the one thing needed toward the true delineation of the Irish character, whatever the rank or education of the individual thus put on the scene may happen to be.

"O my darling, my darling!" cried the old woman, almost lifting the girl by main force from the ground; "my heart's blood, a-cushla machree! what are you doing down there upon the damp grass, (sure it will be the death of you, it will,) with the morning fog wrapping round you like a curtain? Is there anything wrong up there at the castle? or what is it all, at all, that brings you down here before the sun has had time to say 'Good-morrow' to the tree-tops?"

"O Grannie, Grannie!" sobbed the girl, "have you not heard? do you not know already? It was to say good-by—I could not go without it. Grannie! I never shall see you again—perhaps never."

Pity, and love, and sympathy, all beaming a moment before upon the face of the old hag, changed as instantaneously as if by magic, into an expression of wild hatred, worthy the features of a conquered savage.

"It is true, then!" she cried; "it is true what I heard last night! what I heard—but wouldn't believe, Miss Nellie—if you were not here to the fore to say it to me yourself! It is true that they are for robbing the old master of his own; and that them murdering Cromwellians—my black curse on every mother's son of them—"

But before she could bring her denunciation to its due conclusion, the girl had put her hand across her mouth, and, with terror written on every feature of her face, exclaimed:

"Hush, Grannie, hush? For Christ and his sweet Mother's sake, keep quiet! Remember such words have cost many an honest man his life ere now, and God alone can tell who may or may not be within hearing at this moment."

She caught the old woman by the arm as she spoke, dragging rather than leading her into the interior of the cottage. Once there, however, and with the door carefully closed behind her, she made no scruple of yielding to the anguish which old Grannie's lamentations had rather sharpened than allayed, and sitting down upon a low settle, suffered her tears to flow in silence. Grannie squatted herself down on the ground at her feet, and swaying her body backward and forward after the fashion of her people, broke out once more into vociferous lamentations over the fallen fortunes of her darling.

"Ochone! ochone! that the young May morning of my darling's life (which ought to be as bright as God's dear skies above us) should be clouded over this way like a black November's! Woe is me! woe is me! that I should have lived to see the day when the old stock is to be rooted out as if it was a worthless weed for the sake of a set of beggarly rapscallions, who have only come to Ireland, may be, because their own land (my heavy curse on it, for the heavy hand it has ever and always laid on us!) wasn't big enough to hold their wickedness."

It was in perfect unconsciousness and good faith that old Grannie thus spoke of Nellie and her family as of the old stock of the country—a favorite expression to this day among people of her class in Ireland.

The English descendants of Ireland's first invaders had, in fact, as years rolled by, and even while proudly asserting their own claims as Englishmen, so thoroughly identified themselves both by intermarriages and the adoption of language, dress, and manners with the Celtic natives of the soil that the latter, ever ready, too ready for their own interest perhaps, to be won by kindness, had ended by transferring to them the clannish feeling once given to their own rulers, and fought in the days we speak of under the standard of a De Burgh or a Fitzgerald as heartily and bitterly against Cromwell's soldiers as if an O'Neil or a MacMurrough had led them to the combat. To Nellie Netterville, therefore, the sympathy and indignation of old Grannie seemed quite as much a matter of course as if the blue blood coursing through her veins had been derived from a Celtic chieftain instead of from an old Norman baron of the days of King Henry. Nellie was, moreover, connected with the old woman by a tie which in those days was as strong, and even stronger, than that of race; for the English of the Pale had adopted in its most comprehensive sense the Irish system of fosterage, and Grannie having acted as foster-mother to Nellie's father, was, to all intents and purposes, as devoted to the person of his daughter as if she had been in very deed a grandchild of her own.

But natural as such sympathy might have seemed, and soothing as no doubt it was to her wounded feelings, it was yet clothed in such dangerous language that it had an effect upon Nellie the very opposite of that which, under any other circumstances, it might have been expected to produce. It recalled her to the necessity of self-possession, and conscious that she must command her own feelings if she hoped to control those of her warm-hearted dependent, she deliberately wiped the tears from her eyes, and rose from the settle on which she had flung herself only a few minutes before, in an uncontrolled agony of grief. When she felt that she had thoroughly mastered her own emotion, she drew old Grannie toward her, made her sit down on the stool she herself had just vacated, and kneeling down beside her, said in a tone of command which contrasted, oddly yet prettily enough, with the child-like attitude assumed for the purpose of giving it:

"You must not say such things. Grannie. I forbid it! Now and for ever I forbid it! You must not say such things. They can neither help us nor save us sorrow, and they might cost your life, old woman, if any evil-designing person heard them."

"My life! my life!" cried old Grannie passionately. "And tell me, acushla, what is the value of my life to me, if all that made it pleasant to my heart is to be taken from me? Haven't I seen your father, whom I nursed at this breast until (God pardon me!) I loved him as well or better than them that were sent to me for my own portion? haven't I seen him brought back here for a bloody burial in the very flower of his days? and didn't I lead the keening over him at the self-same moment that I knew my own poor boy was laying stiff and stark on the battle-field, where he had fallen (as well became him) in the defence of his own master? And now you come and tell me that you—you who are all that is left me in the wide world; you who have been the very pulse of my heart ever since you were in the cradle—that you and the old lord are to be driven out of your own kingdom, and sent, God only knows where, into banishment—(him an old man of seventy, and you a slip of a girl that was only yesterday, so to speak, in your nurse's arms)—and you would have me keep quiet, would you? You'd have me belie the thought of my heart with a smiling face? and all for the sake of a little longer life, forsooth! Troth, a-lannah, I have had a good taste of that same life already, and it's not so sweet I found it, that I would go as far as the river to fetch another sup of it. Not so sweet—not so sweet," moaned the old woman, rocking herself backward and forward in time to the inflection of her voice, "not so sweet for the lone widow woman, with barely a roof above her head, and not a chick or child (when you are out of it) for comfort or for coaxing!"

Grannie had poured forth this harangue with all the eloquent volubility of her Irish heart and tongue, and though Nellie had made more than one effort for the purpose, she had hitherto found it quite impossible to check her. Want of breath, however, silenced her at last, and then her foster-child took advantage of the lull in the storm to say:

"Dear old Grannie, do not talk so sadly. I will love and think of you every day, even in that far-off west to which we are exiled. And I forgot to say, moreover, that my dear mother is to remain here for some months longer, and will be ready (as she ever is) to give help and comfort to all that need it, and to you, of course, dear Grannie, more than to all the rest—you whom she looks, upon almost as the mother of her dead husband."

"Ready to give help? Ay, that in troth she is," quoth Grannie, "God bless her for a sweet and gentle soul, that never did aught but what was good and kind to any one ever since she came among us, and that will be eighteen years come Christmas twelvemonth. Ochone! but them were merry times, a-lannah! long before you were born or thought of. God pity you that you have burst into blossom in such weary days as these are!"

"Merry times? I suppose they were," said Nellie good-naturedly, trying to lead poor Grannie's thoughts back to the good old times when she was young and happy. "Tell me about it now, dear Grannie, (my mother's coming home, I mean,) that I may amuse myself by thinking it all over again, when I am far away in the lone west, and no good old Grannie to go and have a gossip with when I am tired of my own company."

"Why, you see, Miss Nellie, and you mustn't be offended if I say it," said Grannie, eagerly seizing on this new turn given to her ideas; "we weren't too well pleased at first to hear that the young master was to be wedded in foreign parts, and some of us were even bold enough to ask if there weren't girls fair enough, ay, and good enough too, for that matter, for him in Ireland, that he must needs bring a Saxon to reign over us! However, when the old lord up yonder at the castle, came down and told us how she had sent him word, that for all she had the misfortune to be English born, she meant, once she was married in Ireland, to be more Irish than the Irish themselves, then, I promise you, every vein in our hearts warmed toward her; and on the day of her coming home, there wasn't, if you'll believe me, a man, woman, or child, within ten miles of Netterville, who didn't go out to meet her, until, what with the shouting and the hustling, she began to think, (the creature,) as she has often told me since, that it was going to massacre her, may be, that we were; for sure, until the day she first saw the young master, it was nothing but tales upon tales she had heard of how the wild Irish were worse than the savages themselves, and how murder and robbery were as common and as little thought of with us as daisies in the springtime. Any way, if she thought that for a moment, she didn't think it long; for when she faced round upon us at the castle-gates, standing between her husband and her father-in-law, (the old lord himself,) we gave her a cheer that might have been heard from this to Tredagh, if the wind had set that way; and though she didn't then understand the 'Cead-mille-failthe to your ladyship!' that we were shouting in our Irish, she was cute enough, at all events, to guess by our eyes and faces what our tongues were saying. And that wasn't all," continued Grannie, growing more and more garrulous as she warmed to her theme; "that wasn't all neither; for when the people were so tired they could shout no more, and quiet was restored, she whispered something to the young master; and what do you think he did, my dear, but led her right down to the place where me and my son (his own foster-brother, that's gone, God rest him!) were standing in the crowd, and she put out her pretty white hand and said, (it was the first and last time that ever I liked the sound of the English,) 'It is you, then, that was my husband's foster-mother, isn't it?' And says I, in her own tongue, for I had picked up English enough at the castle for that, 'Please your ladyship, I am, and this is the boy,' says I, pulling my own boy forward—for he was shy like, and had stepped a little backward when she came near—'this is the boy that slept with Master Gerald' (that was the master, you know, honey) 'on my breast.'"

"'Well, then,' said she, giving one hand to me and the other to my boy, 'remember it is with my foster-brother I mean to lead out the dancing to-night;' and troth, my pet, she was as good as her word, and not a soul would she dance with, for all the fine lords and gentlemen who had come to the wedding, until she had footed it for a good half-hour at least with my Andie, Ah! them were times indeed, my jewel," the old crone querulously wound up her chronicle by saying. "And to think that I should have lived to see the day when the young master's father and the master's child are to be hunted out of their own by a Cromwellian upstart with his 'buddagh Sassenachs,' (Saxon clowns,) like so many bloodhounds at his heels, to ride over us roughshod."

So far the young girl had "seriously inclined her ear" to listen, partly to soothe old Grannie's grief by suffering it to flow over, and partly, perhaps, because her own mind, exhausted by present sufferings, found some unconscious relief in letting itself be carried back to those bright days when the sun of worldly prosperity still lighted up her home. The instant, however, that the old woman began, with all the ferocity of a half-tamed nature, to pour out denunciations on the foes who had wrought her ruin, she checked the dangerous indulgence of her feelings by saying:

"Hush, dear Grannie, and listen to me. My mother is to stay here until May, (so much grace they have seen fit to do us,) in order that she may collect our stock and gather such of our people together as may choose to follow us into exile."

"Then, may be, she'll take me," cried old Grannie suddenly, her withered face lightening up into an expression of hope and joy that was touching to behold. "May be she'll take me, a-lannah!"

Nellie Netterville eyed Grannie wistfully. Nothing, in fact, would she have better liked than to have taken that old relic of happier days with her to her exile; but old, decrepid, bowed down by grief as well as years, as Grannie was, it would have been folly, even more than cruelty, to have suffered her to offer herself for Connaught transplantation. It would have been, however, but a thankless office to have explained this in as many words; so Nellie only said: "When the time comes, dear old woman, when the time comes, it will be soon enough to talk about it then—that is to say, if you are still able and willing for the venture."

"Willing enough at all events, God knows," said Grannie earnestly. "But why not go at once with you, my darling? The mistress is the mistress surely; but blood is thicker than water, and aren't you the child of the man that I suckled on this bosom? Why not go at once with you?"

"I think it is too late in the year for you—too cold—too wretched; and besides, we are only to take one servant with us, and of course it must be a man," said Nellie, not even feeling a temptation to smile at the blind zeal which prompted Grannie to offer herself, with her sixty years and her rheumatic limbs, to the unprofitable post of bower-maiden in the wilderness. "It would not do to alter our arrangements now," she continued gently; "but when spring comes, we will see what can be done; and in the mean time, you must go as often as you can to the castle, to cheer my dear mother with a little chat. Promise me that you will, dear Grannie, for she will be sad enough and lonely enough, I promise you, this poor mother, and nothing will help her so much in her desolation as to talk with you of those dear absent ones, who well she knows are almost as precious to you as they can be to herself. And now I must begone—I must indeed! I could not go in peace without seeing you once more, and so I stole out while all the rest of the world were sleeping; but now the sun is high in the heavens, and they will be looking for me at the castle. Good-by, dear Grannie, good-by!"

Sobbing as if her heart would break, Nellie flung her arms round the old woman's neck; but Grannie, with a wild cry of mingled grief and love, slipt through her embraces and flung herself at her feet. Nellie raised her gently, placed her once more upon the settle, and not daring to trust herself to another word, walked straight out of the cottage, and closed the door behind her.

Chapter II.

The sun had by this time nearly penetrated through the heavy fog, which had hung since early dawn like a vail over the valley; and just as Nellie reached the foot of the path leading straight up to the castle, it fairly broke through every obstacle, and cast a gleam of wintry sunshine on her face. That face, once seen, was not one easily to be forgotten. The features were almost, and yet not quite, classic in their beauty, gaining in expression what they lost in regularity; and the frequent mingling, by intermarriages, of Celtic blood with that of her old Norman race, had given Nellie that most especial characteristic of Irish beauty—hair black and glossy as the raven's wing, with eyes blue as the dark, double violet, and looking even bluer and darker than they were by nature through the abundance of the long, silken lashes, the same color as her hair, which fringed them. She carried her small, beautifully-formed head with the grace and spirit of a young antelope, and there was something of firmness even in the elastic lightness of her movements, which gave an idea of energy and decision not naturally to be looked for in one so young and girlish, both as to form and feature. Her tight-fitting robe of dark and strong material, though evidently merely adopted for the convenience of travelling, rather set off than detracted from the beauty of her form; and over it hung that long, loose mantle of blue cloth which seems, time out of mind, to have been a favorite garment with the Irish. It was fastened at the throat by a brooch of gold, curious and valuable even then for its evident antiquity; and with its broad, graceful folds falling to her feet, and its hood drawn forward over her head, and throwing her sweet, sad face somewhat into shadow, gave her at that moment, as the sun shone down upon her, the very look and expression of a Mater Dolorosa.

Ten minutes' rapid walking up a path, which looked more like an irregular staircase cut through rock and turf-mould than a way worn gradually by the pressure of men's feet, brought her to the platform upon which the castle stood.

Moated and circumvallated toward the south and west, which were easy of access from the flat lands beyond, Netterville was comparatively defenceless on the side from whence Nellie now approached it; its builders and inhabitants having evidently considered the deep stream and valley which lay beneath as a sufficient protection against their enemies.

The great gate stood looking eastward, and Nellie could see from the spot where she halted that all the preparations for her approaching journey were already almost completed. A couple of sorry-looking nags, (garrans, the Irish would have called them,) one with a pillion firmly fixed behind the saddle, were being led slowly up and down in readiness for their riders. Little sorrowful groups of the Irish dependents of the family stood here and there upon the terraces, waiting (faithful to the last as they ever were in those days) to give one parting glance and one sorrowful, long farewell to their deposed chieftain and his heiress; and a little further off, like hawks hovering around their prey, might be seen a band of those iron-handed, iron-hearted men in whose favor the transplantation of the present owners of the soil had been decreed, and who had been set there, half to watch and half to enforce departure, should anything like evasion or resistance be attempted. Something very like an angry frown clouded Nellie's brow as she caught sight of these men for whose benefit she was being robbed of her inheritance; but, unwilling to indulge such evil feelings, she suffered her gaze to pass quietly beyond them until it rested once more on the streamlet and valley as they stretched eastward toward the sea. Just then some one tapped her on the shoulder, and, turning sharply round, Nellie found herself confronted by a woman not many years older, probably, than herself, but with a face upon which, beautiful as it was, the early indulgence of wild passions had stamped a look of premature decay.

"What would you with me?" said Nellie, surprised at the familiarity of the salutation, and not in the least recognizing the person who had been guilty of it. "I know you not. What do you want with me?"

"Oh! little or nothing," said the other, in a harsh and taunting voice; "little or nothing, my fair young mistress—heiress, that has been, of the house of Netterville—only I thought that, may be, you could say if the old mistress will be after going with you into exile. They told me she was," she added, with a gesture toward the soldiers; "and yet, as far as I can see, only one of the garrans has a pillion to its back. But, may be, she'll be for going later—"

"I have already said," Nellie coldly answered, for she neither liked the matter nor the manner of the woman's speech—"I have already said that I know you not, and, in all likelihood, neither does my mother. Why, therefore, do you ask the question?"

"Because I hope it!" said the woman, with such a look of hatred on her face that Nellie involuntarily recoiled a step—"because I hope it; and then perhaps, when she is houseless and hungry herself, she will remember that cold December night when she drove me from her door, to sleep, for all that she cared, under the shelter of the whin-bushes in the valley."

"If my mother, good and gentle as she is to all, ever acted as you say she did, undoubtedly she had wise and sufficient reasons for it," Nellie coldly answered.

"Undoubtedly—good and sufficient reasons had she, and so, for that matter, had I too, when I put my heavy curse upon her and all her breed," retorted the girl, with a coarse and taunting laugh. "And see how it has come to work," she added wildly—"see how it has come to work! Ay, ay—she'll mind it when it is too late, I doubt not; and will think twice before she lets loose her Saxon pride to flout a poor body for only asking a night's shelter under her roof. Roof! she'll soon have no roof for herself, I guess; but if ever she has one again, she'll think better of it, I doubt not."

"She will think next time just what she thought last time—that, so long as you lead the life you lead at present, you would not, though you were a princess, be fitting company for the lowest scullion in her kitchen."

Thus spoke a grave, sweet voice (not Nellie's) close at the woman's elbow. She started, as if a wasp had stung her, and turned toward the speaker.

A tall lady, dressed in widow's weeds, with a pale face and eyes weary, it almost seemed, with sorrow, had approached quietly from behind, and overhearing the girl's defiant speech, saved Nellie the trouble of an answer by that firm yet most womanly response. Then passing to the front, she put her arm round Nellie's waist, as if to protect her from the very presence of the other, and drew her away, saying:

"Come along, my daughter; the morning wears apace, and these long delays do but embitter partings. Your grandfather is already waiting. Remember, Nellie," she added in a faltering voice, "that he, with his seventy years, will be almost as dependent upon your strength and energy as you can be on his. He is my dead husband's father, and therefore, after a long and bitter struggle with my own heart, I have devoted you, my own and only treasure, to be his best support and help and comfort in the long and unseasonable journey to which the cruelty of our conquerors has compelled him. I trust—I trust in God and his sweet Mother that I shall see no cause later to repent me of this decision!"

Nellie drew a little closer to her mother, and a strange firmness of expression passed over her young face as she answered quietly:

"My own unselfish mother, doubt not that I will be all—son and daughter both in one—to him; and fear not, I do beseech you, for our safety. What though he has seen his seventy winters, and I but barely seventeen! We are strong and healthy, both of us; and with clean consciences (which is more than our foes can boast of) and good wits, I doubt not we shall reach our destination safely. Destination!" she repeated bitterly—"ay, destination; for home, in any sense of the word, it never can be to us."

"Say not so, my Nellie—say not so," said her mother gently. "Home, after all, is only the place where we garner up our treasures; and, therefore, in the spot where I may rejoin you, however wild and desolate it otherwise shall be, my heart, at all events, will acknowledge it has found its home!"

As they thus conferred together, mother and daughter had been moving slowly toward the castle, in absolute forgetfulness of the woman who had originally made a third in the group, and who was still following at a little distance. She stopped, however, on discovering that they had no intention of making her a sharer in their conversation, and, gazing after them with a fearful mingling of hatred and wounded pride on her coarse, handsome features, exclaimed aloud:

"The second time you have flouted me, good madam! Well, well, the third is the charm, and then it will be my turn. See if I do not make you rue it!"

Shaking her fist, as she spoke, savagely in the air, she turned her back upon Netterville towers, and rushed down a path leading directly to the river.

As Mrs. Netterville and her daughter approached the castle-gates, a young man came out to meet them, and, with a look and bearing half-way between that of an intelligent and trusted servant and a petted follower, said hurriedly:

"My lord grows impatient, madam. He says he is ready to depart at once, and that the sooner it is done the better. And, in troth, I am much of the same way of thinking my own self," he added, with that sort of grim severity which some men seem almost naturally to assume the moment they feel themselves in danger of giving way to grief, in the womanly fashion of tears.

Hamish was of the same age as Nellie, though he looked and felt at least eight years older. He was her foster-brother, as we have already said, and had been her companion in the nursery; but as war and poverty thinned the ranks of followers attached to the house of Netterville, he had been gradually advanced from one post of confidence to another, until, young as he was, he united the various duties of "bailiff" or "steward," as it would be called in Ireland—major-domo or butler, valet, and footman, all in his own proper person.

"True," said Mrs. Netterville, in answer to his communication—"too true. Every moment that he lingers now will be but a fresh barbing of the arrow. Come, my Nellie, let us hasten to your grandfather. Would that I could persuade him to take Hamish with him instead of Mat, who has little strength and less wit to help you in such a journey. I should be far more at ease, both on his account and yours, my daughter."

"Faix, madam, and it was just that same that I was thinking to myself awhile ago," cried Hamish eagerly. "Sure, who has a better right to go with Mistress Nellie than her own foster-brother? And am not I strong enough, and more than willing enough to fight for her—ay, and to die for her too, if any of them black-browed hypocrites should dare for to cast their evil eyes upon her or the old master?"

"Strong enough and brave enough undoubtedly you are," said Nellie, speaking before her mother could reply, "and true-hearted more than enough, my dear foster-brother, are you; but, if only for that very reason, you must stay here to help and comfort my dear mother. Bethink you, Hamish, hers is, in truth, the hardest lot of any. We shall have but to endure the weariness of long travel; she will have to contend with the insolence of men in high places—yes, and perhaps even to dispute with them, day by day, and hour by hour, for that which is her rightful due and ours. This is man's work, not woman's; and a man, moreover, quick-witted and fearing no one. Will you not be that man, Hamish, to stand by her against the tyrant and oppressor, and to act for her whenever and wherever it may be impossible for her to act for herself?"

Hamish would have answered with a fervor equal to her own, but Mistress Netterville prevented him by saying, with a mingling of grief and impatience in her manner:

"It is in vain to talk to you, Nellie! You have all your grandfather's stiff-necked notions on this subject. Nevertheless it would have been far more to my real contentment if he and you had yielded to my wishes, seeing that there is many a one still left among our dependents to whom, on a pinch, I could entrust the care both of cattle and of household gear, and but one (and that is Hamish) to whom willingly I would confide my child."

"Now, may Heaven bless you for that very word, madam," cried Hamish eagerly and gratefully; and then turning to Nellie, he went on: "See now, Mistress Nellie, see now, when her ladyship herself has said it—surely you would never think of going contrary to her wishes!"

"Listen to me, Hamish," said Nellie, putting her hand on his shoulder and standing still, so that her mother unconsciously moved on without her. "Ever since that weary day when the sheriff came here to inform us of our fate, I have had a strange, uncomfortable foreboding that my mother will soon find herself in even a worse plight than ours. A woman, as she will be, alone and friendless—foemen all around her—foemen domiciled even in her household—foemen, the worst and cruelest of any, with prayer on their lips and hypocrisy in their hearts, and a strong sword at their hips, ready to smite and slay, as they themselves express it, all who oppose that wicked lusting for wealth and power which they so blindly mistake for the promptings of a good spirit! With us, once we have obtained our certificate from the commissioners at Loughrea, it will be far otherwise. Each step we take in our wild journey westward will, if, alas! it leads us further from our friends, set, likewise, a safer distance between us and our oppressors. Promise me, therefore, to ask no more to follow us who go to peace and safety, but to abide quietly here, where alone a real danger threatens. Promise me even more than this, my foster-brother—promise to stay with her so long as ever she may need you; and should aught of evil happen to her, which may God avert! promise to let me know at once, that I may instantly return and take a daughter's proper place beside her. Promise me this, Hamish—nay, said I promise!—Hamish, you must swear it!"

"I swear it! by the Mother of Heaven and her blessed Child, I swear it!" said Hamish fervently; for he saw at once that there was much probability in Nellie's view of the subject, though, in his overweening anxiety for the daughter, he had hitherto overlooked the chances of danger to the mother. "But, Christ save us!" he added suddenly, as some wild notes of preparation reached his experienced ear; "Christ save us, if the old women are not going to keen for your departure as if it were a burial!"

"Oh! do not let them—do not let them; bid them stop if they would not break our hearts!" cried Nellie, rushing on to overtake her mother, while Hamish, in obedience to her wishes, struck right across the terrace toward a distant group of women, among whom, judging by their excited looks and gestures, he knew that he should find the keeners. Long, however, ere he could reach them, a wild cry of lamentation, taken up and prolonged until every man, woman, and child within ear-shot had lent their voices to swell the chorus, made him feel that he was too late; and turning to ascertain the cause of this sudden outburst, he saw that Lord Netterville had come forth from the castle, and was standing at the open gates. A fine, soldierly-looking man he was, counting over seventy years, yet in appearance not much more than sixty, and as he stood there, pale and bare-headed, in the presence of his people, a shout of such mingled love and sympathy, grief and execration rent the air, that some of the Cromwellian soldiers made an involuntary step forward, and handled their muskets in expectation of an attack.

"Tell them to stop!" cried the old man, throwing up his arms like one who could bear his agony no longer. "For God's sake, tell them to stop! Let them wait, at least," he added, half bitterly, half sorrowfully, "until, like the dead, I am out of hearing."

There was no need for Hamish to become the interpreter of his wishes. That sudden cry of a man's irrepressible anguish had reached the hearts of all who heard it, and a silence fell upon the crowd—a silence more expressive of real sympathy than their wildest lamentations could have been.

The old lord bowed, and tried to speak his thanks, but the words died upon his lips, and he turned abruptly to take leave of his daughter-in-law. She knelt to receive his blessing. He laid his hand upon her head, and then, making an effort to command his voice, said tenderly:

"Fare thee well, my best and dearest! It is the way of these canting times to be for ever quoting Scripture, and for once I will follow fashion. May Heaven bless and keep thee, daughter; for a very Ruth hast thou been to me in my old age; yea, and better than seven sons in this the day of my poverty and sorrow!"

He stooped to kiss her brow and to help her to rise, and as he did so, he added in a whisper, meant only for the lady's ear:

"Forgive me. Mary, if I once more allude to that subject we have so much discussed already. Are you still in the mind to send Nellie with me? Think better of it, I entreat you. The daughter's place should ever, to my poor thinking, be beside her mother!"

"I have thought," she answered, "and I have decided. If Nellie is my child, she is your grandchild as well; and the duty which her father is no longer here to tender, it must be her pride and joy to offer you in his stead. Moreover, my good lord," she added, in a still lower tone, "the matter hath another aspect. Nellie will be safer with you! This place and all it contains is even now at the mercy of a lawless soldiery, and therefore it is no place for her. Too well I feel that even I, her mother, am powerless to protect her."

Lord Netterville cast a wistful glance on the fair face of his young granddaughter, and said reluctantly:

"It may be that you are right, sweet Moll, as you ever are. Come, then, if so it must be, give us our good-speed, and let us hasten on our way."

He once more pressed her affectionately in his arms, then walked straight up to his horse, and leaped almost without assistance to the saddle. But his face flushed scarlet, and then grew deadly pale, and as he shook his reins and settled himself in his seat, it was evident to Hamish, who was holding his stirrup for him, that he was struggling with all his might and main to bear himself with a haughty semblance of indifference before the English soldiery. After he was seated to his satisfaction, he ventured a half glance around his people, and lifted his beaver to salute them. But the effort was almost too much; the big tears gathered in his eyes, and his hand shook so violently that he could not replace his hat, which, escaping from his feeble grasp, rolled under his horse's feet. Half a dozen children darted forward to recover it, but Hamish had already picked it up and given it to his master, who instantly put it on his head, saying, in a tone of affected indifference:

"Pest on these trembling fingers which so libel the stout heart within. This comes of wine and wassail, Hamish. Drink thou water all thy life, good youth, if thou wouldst match a sturdy heart with a steady hand, when thy seventy years and odd are on you."

"Faix, my lord, will I or nill I," said Hamish, trying to fall in with the old man's humor by speaking lightly; "will I or nill I, it seems only too likely that water will be the best part of my wine for some time to come; leastways," he added in a lower voice, "leastways till your honor comes back to your own again, and broaches us a good cask of wine to celebrate the day."

"Back again! back again!" repeated Lord Netterville, shaking his head with a mixture of grief and impatience impossible to describe. "I tell thee, Hamish, that men never come back again when they carry seventy years with them to exile. But where is my granddaughter? Bid her come forth at once, for it's ill lingering here with this weeping crowd around us, and yonder pestilent group of fanatics marking out every mother's son among them, doubtless, for future vengeance."

Mrs. Netterville heard this impatient cry for her only child, and flung her arms for one last passionate embrace round Nellie's neck. Then, firm and unfaltering to the end, she led her to Hamish, who lifted her as reverently as if she had been an empress (as indeed she was in his thoughts) to the pillion behind her grandfather.

Lord Netterville barely waited until she was comfortably settled, ere he stooped to kiss once more his daughter-in-law's uplifted brow, after which, waving his hands toward the weeping people, he dug his spurs deep into his horse's sides, and rode swiftly forward.

Then, as if moved by one common impulse, every man, woman, and child in presence there, fell down upon their knees, mingling prayers and blessings, and howls and imprecations, as only an Irish or an Italian crowd can do; and yet obedient to the last to the wishes of their departing chief, it was not until he was well-nigh out of sight that they broke out into that wild, wailing keen, with which they were known to accompany their loved ones to the grave. But the wind was less considerate, and as it unluckily set that way, it bore one or two of the long, sad notes to him in whose honor they were chanted. As they fell upon the old exile's ears, the stoical calmness which he had hitherto maintained forsook him utterly; the reins fell from his hands, he bowed his head till his white locks mingled with his horse's mane, and, "lifting up his voice," he wept as sadly and unrestrainedly as a woman.

To Be Continued.

The Church Review and Victor Cousin.
[Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: The American Quarterly Church Review. New York: N. S. Richardson. January, 1868. Art. ii., "O. A. Brownson as a Philosopher. Victor Cousin and his Philosophy. Catholic World."]

The article in the Church Review promises an estimate of the character of Dr. O. A. Brownson as a philosopher; but what it says has really no relation to that gentleman, and is simply an attempt, not very successful, nor very brilliant indeed, to vindicate M. Cousin's philosophy from the unfavorable judgment we pronounced on it, in the magazine of last June. Dr. Brownson is not the editor, nor one of the editors, of The Catholic World; the article in question was signed by no name, was impersonal, and the Review has no authority for charging its authorship to any one but ourselves, or for holding any but ourselves responsible for its merits or demerits. When the name of a writer is signed to an article, he should be held answerable for its contents; but when it is not, the magazine in which it appears is alone responsible. According to this rule, we hold the Church Review answerable for its "rasping" article against ours.

The main purpose of the reviewer seems to be to prove that we wrote in nearly entire ignorance of M. Cousin's philosophy, and to vindicate it from the very grave charges we urged against it. As to our ignorance, as well as his knowledge, that must speak for itself; but we can say sincerely that we should be most happy to be proved to have been in the wrong, and to see Cousin's philosophy cleared from the charge of being unscientific, rationalistic, pantheistic, or repugnant to Christianity and the church. One great name would be erased from the list of our adversaries, and their number would be so much lessened. We should count it a great service to the cause which is so dear to us, if the Church Review could succeed in proving that the errors we laid to his charge are founded only in our ignorance or philosophical ineptness, and that his system is entirely free from them. But though it talks largely against us, assumes a high tone, and makes strong assertions and bold denials, we cannot discover that it has effected anything, except the exhibition of itself in an unenviable light. It has told us nothing of Cousin or his philosophy not to be found in our article, and has not in a single instance convicted us of ignorance, malice, misstatement, misrepresentation, or even inexactness. This we shall proceed now to show, briefly as we can, but at greater length, perhaps, than its crude statements are worth.

The principal charges against us are:

1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophy eclecticism;
2. We wrongly denied scepticism to be a system of philosophy;
3. Showed our ignorance of Cousin's doctrine in saying it remained in psychology, never attained to the objective, or rose to ontology;
4. Misstated his doctrine of substance and cause;
5. Falsely denied that he admits a nexus between the creative substance and the created existence;
6. Falsely asserted that he holds creation to be necessary;
7. Wrongly and ignorantly accused him of Pantheism;
8. Asserted that he had but little knowledge of Catholic theology;
9. Accused him of denying the necessity of language to thought.

In preferring these charges against M. Cousin's philosophy, we have shown our ignorance of his real doctrine, our contempt for his express declarations, and our philosophical incapacity, and the reviewer thinks one may search in vain through any number of magazine articles of equal length, for one more full of errors and fallacies than ours. This is bad, and, if true, not at all to our credit. We shall not say as much of his article, for that would not be courteous, and instead of saying it, prefer to let him prove it. We objected that M. Cousin assuming that to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, can never, on his system, establish such reality; the reviewer, p. 541, gravely asserts that we ourselves hold, that to the operations of reason no objective reality is necessary, and can never be established! This is charming. But are these charges true? We propose to take them up seriatim, and examine the reviewer's proofs.

1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism. To this the reviewer replies:

"'Eclecticism can never be a philosophy;' making, among other arguments, the pertinent inquiry: 'How, if you know not the truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, are you, in studying those several systems, to determine which is the part of truth and which of error?'

"We beg his pardon, but M. Cousin never called his philosophical system Eclecticism. In the introduction to the Vrai, Beau, et Bien, he writes:

"'One word as to an opinion too much accredited. Some persons persist in representing eclecticism as the doctrine to which they would attach my name. I declare, then, that eclecticism is, undoubtedly, very dear to me, for it is in my eyes the light of the history of philosophy; but the fire which supplies this light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most important and useful applications of the philosophy I profess, but it is not its principle. My true doctrine, my true flag, is spiritualism; that philosophy, as stable as it is generous, which began with Socrates and Plato, which the gospel spread abroad in the world, and which Descartes placed under the severe forms of modern thought'

"And the principles of this philosophy supply the touchstone with which to try 'those several systems, and to determine which is the part of truth and which of error.' Eclecticism, in Cousin's view of it, as one might have discovered who had 'studied his works with some care,' is something more than a blind syncretism, destitute of principles, or a fumbling among conflicting systems to pick out such theories as please us."

If M. Cousin never called his philosophical system eclecticism, why did he defend it from the objections brought on against it, that, i. Eclecticism is a syncretism—all systems mingled together; 2. Eclecticism approves of everything, the true and the false, the good and the bad; 3. Eclecticism is fatalism; 4. Eclecticism is the absence of all system? Why did he not say at once that he did not profess eclecticism, instead of saying and endeavoring to prove that the eclectic method is at once philosophical and historical? [Footnote 32]

[Footnote 32: See Fragments Philosophiques, t i. pp. 39-42.]

Everybody knows that he professed eclecticism and defended it. As a method, do you say? Be it so. Does he not maintain, from first to last, that a philosopher's whole system is in his method? Does he not say, "Given a philosopher's method, we can foretell his whole system"? And is not his whole course of the history of philosophy based on this assumption? We wrote our article for those who knew Cousin's writings, not for those who knew them not. There is nothing in the passage quoted from the reviewer, quoted from Cousin, that contradicts what we said. We did not say that he always called philosophy eclecticism, or pretend that it was the principle of his system. We said:

"There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold; but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the philosopher. M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as the real and original method of constructing philosophy. The name was therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard." (Catholic World, p. 335.)

Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that we criticised it as such.

2. Cousin counts scepticism as a system of philosophy. We object, and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive, "What, then, is the truth of scepticism, which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that any thing can be affirmed?" Will the reviewer answer the question?

The reviewer, of course, finds us in the wrong. Here is his reply:

"In the history of the progress of the human mind, the phase of scepticism is not to be overlooked. At different periods it has occurred, to wield a strong, sometimes a controlling, often a salutary, influence over the thought of an age. Its work, it is true, is destructive, and not constructive; but not the less as a check and restraint upon fanciful speculation, and the establishment of unsound hypotheses, it has its raison d'être, and contributes, in its way, to the advancement of truth. Nor can the works of Sextus, Pyrrho, Glanvil, Montaigne, Gassendi, or Hume be considered less 'systematic' than those of any dogmatist, merely from their being 'systems of pure negation.'" (P. 533.)

That it is sometimes reasonable and salutary to doubt, as if the reviewer should doubt his extraordinary genius as a philosopher, we readily admit; but what salutary influence has ever been exerted on science or morals by any so-called system of scepticism, which denies the possibility of science, and renders the binding nature of virtue uncertain, we have never yet been able to ascertain. Moreover, a system of pure negation is simply no system at all, for it has no principle and affirms nothing. A sceptical turn of mind is as undesirable as a credulous mind. That the persons named, of whom only one, Pyrrho, professed universal scepticism, and perhaps even he carried his scepticism no farther than to doubt the reality of matter, may have rendered some service to the cause of truth, as the drunken helotae promoted temperance among the Spartan youth, is possible; but they have done it by the truth they asserted, not by the doubt they disseminated. There is, moreover, a great difference between doubting, or suspending our judgment where we are ignorant or where our knowledge is incomplete, and erecting doubt into the principle of a system which assumes all knowledge to be impossible, and that certainty is nowhere attained or attainable. It seems, we confess, a little odd to find a Church Review taking up the defence of scepticism.

3. We assert in our article that M. Cousin, though he professes to come out of the sphere of psychology, and to rise legitimately to ontology, remains always there; and, in point of fact, the ontology he asserts is only an abstraction or generalization of psychological facts. The reviewer is almost shocked at this, and is "tempted to think that the time" we claim to have spent in studying the works of Cousin with some care "might have been better employed in the acquisition of some useful knowledge more within the reach of our 'understanding.'" It is possible. But what has he to allege against what we asserted, and think we proved? Nothing that we can find except that Cousin professes to attain, and perhaps believes he does attain, to real objective existence, and, scientifically, to real ontology. But, my good friend, that is nothing to the purpose. The question is not as to what Cousin professes to have done, or what he has really attempted to do, but what he has actually done. When we allege that the being, the God asserted by Cousin, is, on his system, his principles, and method, only an abstraction or a generalization; you do not prove us wrong by reiterating his assertion that it is real being, that it is the living God, for it is, though you seem not to be aware of it, that very assertion that is denied. We readily concede that Cousin does not profess to rise to ontology by induction from his psychology, but we maintain that the only ontology he attains to is simply an induction from his psychology, and therefore is, and can be, only an abstraction or a generalization. We must here reproduce a passage from our own article.

"What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact, can assert, is, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from psychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our own souls. But it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God, and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought and by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption that thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from this psychological or subjective fact we can, by way of induction, attain to ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works with some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his private correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is, that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology. That his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or adequate we do not pretend, but that he professes to recognize them and distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.

"The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have already observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects and asserts with God, the only ens necessarium et reale, and in failing to assert them in their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting them only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in cutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a subjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an idea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he did not dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories." (Catholic World, PP. 335, 336.)

The reviewer, after snubbing us for our ignorance and ineptness, which are very great, as we are well aware and humbly confess, replies to us in this manner:

"And yet nothing in Cousin is clearer or more positive than that this 'pure and sublime degree of the reason, when will, reflection, and personality are as yet absent'—this 'intuition and spontaneous revelation, which is the primitive mode of reason'—is objective to the whole subject in every possible sense, and is, consequently, conformed to the objective, and a revelation of it.

"Can the critic have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, 'thirty or thirty-five years ago'? If so, we advise him to refresh his memory by a re-perusal, and perhaps he may withdraw the strange assertion that Cousin held an 'absolute idea to be impersonal, but that it might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories.' 'The scepticism of Kant,' says Cousin, [Footnote 33] 'rests on his finding the laws of the reason to be subjective, personal to man; but here is a mode of the reason where these same laws are, as it were, deprived of all subjectivity—where the reason shows itself almost entirely impersonal.

"How the critic would wish this impersonal activity to be objective to the 'whole subject,' and not to the 'personal only,' as if there was any greater degree of objectivity in one case than in the other, it is not easy to see. It looks like a distinction without a difference. The abstract and logical distinction is apparent, but though distinct, the 'whole subject,' and the 'human personality,' cannot be separated, so that what is objective to one, shall not be so to the other also. The 'whole subject' is, simply, the thinking, feeling, willing being, which we are, as distinguished from the world external to us. If an idea, then, is revealed to us by what is completely foreign to us—if an act of the reason is spontaneous and unreflective, +hat is, impersonal—what is there that can be more objective to the subject?

"We have said, that such an act is objective to the subject in every possible sense. For we are not to forget the conditions of the case. 'Does one wish,' says Cousin, 'in order to believe in the objectivity and validity of the reason, that it should cease to make its appearance in a particular subject—in man, for instance? But then, if reason is outside of the subject, that is, of myself, it is nothing to me. For me to have consciousness of it, it must descend into me, it must make itself mine, and become in this sense subjective. A reason which is not mine, which, in itself being entirely universal, does not incarnate itself in some manner in my consciousness, is for me as though it did not exist. [Footnote 34] Consequently, to wish that the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility.'" (Pp. 534, 535.)

[Footnote 33: Lecture viii.]

[Footnote 34: Lectures on Kant, viii.]

We have introduced this long extract in order to give our readers a fair specimen of the reviewer's style and capacity as a reasoner. It will be seen that the reviewer alleges, as proof against us, what is in question—the very thing that he is to prove. We have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, and we know well, and have never thought of denying, that he criticises Kant sharply, says many admirable things against him, and professes to reject his subjectivism; we know, also, that he holds what he calls the impersonal reason to be objective, operating independently of us; all this we know and so stated, we thought, clearly enough, in our article; but we, nevertheless, maintain that he does not make this impersonal reason really objective, but simply independent in its operations of our personality. He holds that reason has two modes of activity—the one personal, the other impersonal; but he recognizes only a distinction of modes, sometimes only a difference of degrees, making, as we have seen, as quoted by the reviewer, the impersonal reason a sublimer "degree" of reason than the personal. He calls the impersonal reason the spontaneous reason, sometimes simply spontaneity. All this is evident enough to any one at all familiar with Cousin's philosophical writings.

But what is this reason which operates in these two modes, impersonal and spontaneous in the one, personal and reflective in the other? As the distinction between the personal and impersonal is, by Cousin's own avowal, a difference simply of modes or degrees, there can be no entitative or substantial difference between them. They are not two different or distinct reasons, but one and the same reason, operating in two different modes or degrees. Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities and cannot operate or act at all. What, then, is it? Is it God, or is it man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him a brute, unless you identify man with God. If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as Cousin certainly does say—for he makes it our faculty and only faculty of intelligence—then you make it subjective, since nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but at best only to the will and the personality—what Cousin calls le moi. The most distinguished of the disciples of Cousin was Theodore Jouffroy, who, in his confessions, nearly curses Cousin for having seduced him from his Christian faith, whose loss he so bitterly regretted on his dying-bed, and who was, in Cousin's judgment, as expressed in a letter to the writer of this article, "a true philosopher." This true philosopher and favorite disciple of Cousin illustrates the difference between the impersonal reason and the personal by the difference between seeing and looking, hearing and listening, which corresponds precisely to the difference noted by Leibnitz between what he calls simple perception and apperception. In both cases it is the man who sees, hears, or perceives; but in the latter case, the will intervenes and we not only see, but look, not only perceive, but apperceive.

Now, it is very clear, such being the case, that Cousin does not get out of the sphere of the subject any more than does Kant, and all the arguments he adduces against Kant, apply equally against himself; for he recognizes no actor in thought, or what he calls the fact of consciousness, but the subject. The fact which he alleges, that the impersonal reason necessitates the mind, irresistibly controls it, is no more than Kant says of his categories, which he resolutely maintains are forms of the subject. Hence, as Cousin charges Kant very justly with subjectivism and scepticism, we are equally justified in preferring the same charges against himself. This is what we showed in the article the reviewer is criticising, and to this he should have replied, but, unhappily, has not. He only quotes Cousin to the effect that, "to wish the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility," which only confirms what we have said.

We pursue in our article the argument still further, and add:

"Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is simply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the intervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is, indeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense, but it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of the sphere of the subject, or afford him any basis for his ontological inductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of the ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological conclusions, therefore, as a writer in the Christian Examiner told him as long ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its trustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that, to the operation of reason, no objective reality is necessary, since the object, if impersonal, may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject." (Catholic World, p. 338.)

We quote the reply of the reviewer to this at full length, for no mortal man can abridge or condense it without losing its essence.

"If a man speaks thus, after a careful study of Cousin, it is almost useless to argue with him. He either has not understood the philosopher, or his scepticism is hopelessly obstinate. Intuition, as asserted by Cousin, is not reduced to its proper character, but simply misrepresented, when it is called empirical; for it is the primitive mode of reason, and prior to all experience. It is a revelation of the objective to the subject, and to be a revelation must, of course, come into the consciousness of the subject. Cousin has carefully and repeatedly established the true character of intuition as a disclosure to the understanding in the reason, and free from any touch of subjectivity. Of course, his ontological conclusions rest on a belief in the credibility of reason, and, of course, this credibility can never be established in a logical way, although, metaphysically, it is abundantly established. One may 'assume,' to the end of time, that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the object may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject,' but the universal and invincible opinion of the human race has been, and will be, to the contrary of such an assumption.

"As firmly as Reid and Hamilton have established the doctrine of sensible perception, and the objective existence of the material world, has Cousin that of the objective existence of the absolute, and, on the very same ground, the veracity of consciousness. And the mass of mankind have lived in happy ignorance of any necessity for such arguments. When they sowed and reaped, and bought and sold, they never questioned the real existence of the objects they dealt with; nor did they, when the idea of duty or obligation made itself felt in their souls, dream that, 'for such an operation of reason, no objective reality was necessary.'

"Men have an unquestioning but unconquerable belief, that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them, that obliges. Something other than itself it must be, that commands the soul. Right is a reality, and duty a fact. The philosophy, that does not come round to an enlightened and intelligent holding of the unreflecting belief of mankind, but separates itself from it, is worse than useless. In such wisdom it is indeed 'folly to be wise.' And this philosophic folly comes from insisting on a logical demonstration of what is logically undemonstrable—of what is superior, because anterior to reasoning. We cannot prove to the understanding truths which are the very basis and groundwork of that understanding itself." (Pp. 536, 537.)

This speaks for itself, and concedes, virtually, all we alleged against Cousin's system; at least it convicts us of no misapprehension or misrepresentation of that system; and the reviewer's sneer at our ignorance and incapacity, however much they may enliven his style and strengthen his argument, do not seem to have been specially called for. Yet we think both he and M. Cousin are mistaken when they assume that to demand any other basis for science than the credibility or faith in the trustworthiness of reason, is to demand an impossibility, for a science founded on faith is simply no science at all. There is science only where the mind grasps, and appropriates, not its own faculties only, but the object itself. The reason, personal or impersonal, is the faculty by which we grasp it, or the light by which we behold it; not the object in which the mental action terminates, but the medium by which we attain to the object. If it were otherwise, there might be faith, but not science, and though reason might search for the object, yet it would always be pertinent to ask, Who or what vouches for reason? Descartes answered, The veracity of God, which, in one sense, is true, but not in the sense alleged; for on the Cartesian theory we might ask, what vouches for the veracity of God? The only possible answer would be, it is reason, and we should simply traverse a circle without making the slightest advance.

The difficulty arises from adopting the psychological method of philosophizing, or assuming, as Descartes does in his famous cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore, I exist, that man can think in and of himself, or without the presence and active concurrence of that which is not himself, and which we call the object. Intuition, on Cousin's theory, is the spontaneous operation of reason as opposed to discursion, which is its reflex or reflective operation, but supposes that reason suffices for its own operation. In his course of philosophy professed at the Faculty of Letters in 1818, he says, in the consciousness, that is, in thought, there are two elements, the subject and object; or, in his barbarous dialect, le moi et le non-moi; but he is careful to assert the subject as active and the object as passive. Now, a passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing with the activity of the subject. Then, as all the activity is on the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in and of itself alone. The fact that I think an existence other than myself, on this theory, is no proof that there is really any other existence than myself till my thought is validated, and I have nothing but thought with which to validate thought.

The cogito, ergo sum is, of course, worthless as an argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices, or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say, the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life, and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme. The object being independent of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist a parte rei, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise, therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think? What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he knows, and what he knows.

The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises from thus placing the question of method before the question of principles, as we showed in our former article. No such difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the question of principles—which are given, not found, or obtained by the action of the subject without them—and follows the method they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be established.

The reviewer concedes that objective reality cannot be established in a logical way, but maintains that there is no need of so establishing it; for "men have an unquestioning, an unconquerable belief that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them." Nobody denies the belief, but its validity is precisely the matter in question. How do you prove the validity of the idea of obligation? But the reviewer forgets that Cousin makes it the precise end of philosophy to legitimate this belief, and all the universal beliefs of mankind, and convert them from beliefs into science. How can philosophy do this, if obliged to support itself on these very beliefs?

The reviewer follows the last passage with a bit of philosophy of his own; but, as it has no relevancy to the matter in hand, and is, withal, a little too transcendental for our taste, he must excuse us for declining to discuss it. We cannot accept it, for we cannot accept what we do not understand, and it professes to be above all understanding. In fact, the reviewer seems to have a very low opinion of understanding, and no little contempt for logic. He reminds us of a friend we once had, who said to us, one day, that if he trusted his understanding and followed his logic he should go to Rome; but, as neither logic nor understanding is trustworthy or of any account, he should join the Anglican Church, which he incontinently did, and since, we doubt not, found himself at home. Can it be that he is the writer of the article criticising us?

The reviewer, in favoring us with this bit of philosophy of his own, tells us, in support of it, that Sir William Hamilton says, "All thinking is negation." So much the worse, then, for Sir William Hamilton. All thinking is affirmative, and pure negation can neither think nor be thought. Every thought is a judgment, and affirms both the subject thinking and the object thought, and their relation to each other. This, at least sometimes, is the doctrine of Cousin, as any one may ascertain by reading his essays, Du Fait de Conscience and Du Premier et du dernier Fait de Conscience. [Footnote 35] Though even in these essays the doctrine is mixed up with much that is objectionable, and which leads one, after all, to doubt if the philosopher ever clearly perceived the fact, or the bearing of the fact, he asserted. Cousin often sails along near the coast of truth, sometimes almost rubs his bark against it, without perceiving it. But we hasten on.

[Footnote 35: Fragments Philosophiques, t. i. pp. 248, 256.]

4. We are accused of misstating Cousin's doctrine of substance and cause. Here is our statement and the reviewer's charge:

"'M. Cousin,' continues The Catholic World, 'professes to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to two—substance and cause; but as he in fact identifies cause with substance, declaring substance to be substance only in so much [the italics are ours] as it is cause, and cause to be cause only in so much as it is substance, he really reduces them to the single category of substance, which you may call, indifferently, substance or cause. But, though every substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it may be something more than a cause, it is not necessary to insist on this, and it may be admitted that he recognized two categories.'

"What is exactly meant by these two contradictory statements it is not easy to guess; but let Cousin speak for himself: [Footnote 36]

[Footnote 36: VI. Lecture, Course of 1818, on the Absolute.]

"'Previous to Leibnitz, these two ideas seemed separated in modern philosophy by an impassable barrier. He, the first to sound the nature of the idea of substance, brought it back to the notion of force. This was the foundation of all his philosophy, and of what afterward became the Monadology. ... But has Leibnitz, in identifying the notion of substance with that of cause, presented it with justness? Certainly, substance is revealed to us by cause; for, suppress all exercise of the cause and force which is in ourselves, and we do not exist to ourselves. It is, then, the idea of cause which introduces into the mind the idea of substance. But is substance nothing more than cause which manifests it? .... The causative power is the essential attribute of substance; it is not substance itself. In a word, it has seemed to us surer to hold to these two primitive notions; distinct, though inseparably united; one, which is the sign and manifestation of the other, this, which is the root and foundation of that.'

"One would think this sufficiently explicit for all who are not afflicted with the blindness that will not see." (P. 539.)

We see no self-contradiction in our statement, and no contradiction of M. Cousin. We maintain that M. Cousin really, though probably not intentionally or consciously, reduces the categories of Kant and Aristotle to the single category of substance, and prove it by the words italicized by the reviewer, which are our translation of Cousin's own words. Cousin says, in his own language, in a well-known passage in the first preface of his Fragments Philosophiques, "Le Dieu de la conscience n'est pas un Dieu abstrait, un roi solitaire, rélegué pardelà la création sur le trône desert d'une éternité silencieuse, et d'une existence absolue qui ressemble au néant même de l'existence: c'est un Dieu à la fois vrai et réel, à la fois substance et cause, toujours substance et toujours cause, n'étant substance qu'en tant que cause, et cause qu'en tant que substance, c'est-à-dire, étant cause absolue, un et plusieurs, éternité et temps, espace et nombre, essence et vie, indivisibilité et totalité, principe, fin, et milieu, au sommet de l'être et à son plus humble degré, infini et fini, tout ensemble, triple enfin, c'est-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité. En effet, si Dieu n'est pas tout il n'est rien." [Footnote 37] This passage justifies our first statement, because Cousin calls God substance, the one, absolute substance, besides which there is no substance. But as our purpose, at the moment, was not so much to show that Cousin made substance and cause identical, as it was to show that he made substance a necessary cause, we allowed, for reasons which he himself gives in the passage cited by the reviewer from his course of 1818 on the Absolute, that he might be said to distinguish them, and to have reduced the categories to two, instead of one only, as he professes to have done. But the reviewer hardly needs to be told that, when it is assumed that substance is cause only on condition of causing, that is, causing from the necessity of its own being, the effect is not substantially distinguishable from the substance causing, and is only a mode or affection of the causative substance itself, or, at best, a phenomenon.

[Footnote 37: Fragments Philosophiques, t. i. p. 76.]

5. Accepting substance and cause as two categories, we contend that Cousin requires a third; namely, the creative act of the causative substance, and contingent existences, as asserted in the ideal formula. Ens creat existentias. To this the reviewer cites, from Cousin, the following passage in reply:

"In the fifth lecture of the course of 1828, M. Cousin says:

"'The two terms of this so comprehensive formula do not constitute a dualism, in which the first term is on one side and the second on the other, without any other connection between them than that of being perceived at the same time by the intelligence; so far from this, the tie which binds them is essential. It is a connection of generation which draws the second from the first, and constantly carries it back to it, and which, with the two terms, constitutes the three integrant elements of intelligence. ... Withdraw this relation which binds variety to unity, and you destroy the necessary bond of the two terms of every proposition. These three terms, distinct, but inseparable, constitute at once a triplicity and an indivisible unity. ... Carried into Theodicy, the theory I have explained to you is nothing less than the very foundation of Christianity. The Christians' God is at once triple and one, and the animadversions which rise against the doctrine I teach ought to ascend to the Christian Trinity.'" (P. 540.)

We said in our article, "Under the head of substances he (Cousin) ranges all that is substantial or that pertains to real and necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal or the effects of the causative action of substance. He says he understands, by substance, the universal and absolute substance, the real and necessary being of the theologians; and by phenomena, not mere modes or appearances of substance, but finite and relative substances, and calls them phenomena only in opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or produced by the causative action of substance. [Footnote 38] If this has any real meaning, he should recognize three categories as in the ideal formula, Ens creat existentias, that is, Being, existences, or creatures, and the creative act of being, the real nexus between substance or being and contingent existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to the Creator."

[Footnote 38: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. pp. xix. xx.]

The passage cited by the reviewer from Cousin is brought forward, we suppose, to show that it does recognize this third category; but if so, what becomes of the formal statement that he has reduced the categories to two, substance and cause, or, as he sometimes says, substance or being and phenomenon? Besides, the passage cited does not recognize the third term or category of the formula. It asserts not the creative act of being as the nexus between substance and phenomenon, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the relative, etc.; but generation, which is a very different thing, for the generated is consubstantial with the generator.

6. We were arguing against Cousin's doctrine, that God, being intrinsically active, or, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say, actus purissimus, most pure act, must therefore necessarily create or produce exteriorly. In prosecuting the argument, we anticipated an objection which, perhaps, some might be disposed to bring from Leibnitz's definition of substance, as a vis activa, and endeavored to show that, even accepting that definition, it would make nothing in favor of the doctrine we were refuting, and which Cousin undeniably maintains. We say, "The doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must, from intrinsic necessity, cause in the sense of creating, is not tenable. We are aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy, defines substance to be an active force, a vis activa, but we do not recollect that he anywhere pretends that its activity necessarily extends beyond itself. God is vis activa, if you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially active, and would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say, most pure act; ... but nothing in this implies that he must necessarily act ad extra, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own divine nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his infinite being, for he is complete in himself, is in himself the plenitude of being, and always and everywhere suffices for himself, and therefore for his own activity. Creation, or the production of effects exterior to himself, is not necessary to the perfection of his activity, adds nothing to him, as it can take nothing from him. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him without conceiving him as infinitely, eternally, and essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance or being, without conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating ad extra."

The reviewer says, sneeringly, "This is the most remarkable passage in this remarkable article." He comments on it in this manner:

"Thus appearing to accept the now exploded Leibnitzian theory, which Cousin has combated both in its original form, and as maintained by De Biran, our critic tries to escape from it by this subtle distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair. He enlarges upon it. God, according to him, is indeed vis activa in the most eminent degree, but this does not imply that he must act ad extra, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite being. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him but as infinitely and essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance without conceiving him to be necessarily creating, or acting ad extra. M. Cousin, he says, evidently confounds the interior acts of the divine being with his exterior or creative acts.

"We have no wish to deny that he does make such a confusion. To one who holds that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, and that such reality can never be established,' this kind of subjective activity of the will, which seems so nearly to resemble passivity—these pure acts, or volitions, which never pass out of the sphere of the will into causation—may be satisfactory; but to one who believes that God is not a scholastic abstraction—to one who worships the 'living God' of the Scriptures—it will sound like a pitiful jugglery with words thinly veiling a lamentable confusion of ideas. God is a person, and he acts as a person. The divine will is no otherwise conceivable by us than as of the same nature as man's will; it differs from it only in the mode of its operation—for with him this is always immediate, and no deliberation or choice is possible—and it is as absurd to speak of the activity of his will, the eminently active force, never extending 'out of the circle of his own infinite being,' as it would be to call a man eminently an active person whose activity was all merely purpose or volition, never passing into the creative act ad extra, or out of the circle of his own finite being.

"If St. Anselm is right, that, to be in re is greater than to be in intellectu, then has the creature man, according to the critic, a higher faculty than his Creator essentially and necessarily has. For his will is by nature causative, creative, productive ad extra, and it is nothing unless its activity be called forth into act external to his personality, while the pure acts of the divine will may remain for ever enclosed in the circle of the divine consciousness without realizing themselves ad extra!" (Pp. 540, 541.)

We do not like to tell a man to his face, especially when he assumes the lofty airs and makes the large pretensions of our reviewer, that he does not know what he is talking about, or understand the ordinary terms and distinctions of the science he professes to have mastered, for that, in our judgment, would be uncivil; but what better is to be said of the philosopher who sees nothing more in the distinction between the divine act ad intra, whence the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, and the divine act ad extra, whence man and nature, the universe, and all things visible and invisible, distinguishable from the one necessary, universal, immutable, and eternal being, than in "the distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair"? The Episcopalian journals were right in calling the Church Review's criticism on us "racy," "rasping," "scathing;" it is certainly astounding, such as no mortal man could foresee, or be prepared to answer to the satisfaction of its author.

In the passage reproduced from ourselves we neither accept nor reject the definition of substance given by Leibnitz, nor do we say that Cousin accepts it, although he certainly favors it in his introduction to the Posthumous Works of Maine de Biran, and adduces the fact of his having adopted it in his defence against the charge of pantheism, [Footnote 39] but simply argue that, if any one should adopt it and urge it as an argument for Cousin, it would be of no avail, because Leibnitz does not pretend that substance is or must be active outside of itself, or out of its own interior, that is, must be creative of exterior effects. This is our argument, and it must go for what it is worth.

[Footnote 39: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. p. xxi.]

We admit that in some sense God may be a vis activa, but we show almost immediately that it is in the sense that he is most pure act, that is, in the sense opposed to the potentia nuda of the schoolmen, and means that God is in actu most perfect being, and that nothing in his being is potential, in need of being filled up or actualized. When we speak of his activity, within the circle of his own being, we refer to the fact that he is living God, therefore, Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As all life is active, not passive, we mean to imply that his life is in himself, and that he can and does eternally and necessarily live, and in the very fulness of life in himself; and therefore nothing is wanting to his infinite and perfect activity and beatitude in himself, or without anything but himself. This is so because he is Trinity, three equal persons in one essence, and therefore he has no need of anything but himself; nothing in his being or nature necessitates him to act ad extra, that is, create existences distinct from himself. Does the reviewer understand us now? He is an Episcopalian, and believes, or professes to believe, in the Trinity, and, therefore, in the eternal generation of the Son, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. Do not this generation and this procession imply action? Action assuredly and necessarily, and eternal action too, because they are necessary in the very essence or being of God, and he could not be otherwise than three persons in one God, if, per impossibile, he would. The unity of essence and trinity of persons do not depend on the divine will, but on the divine nature. Well, is this eternal action of generation and procession ad intra, or ad extra? Is the distinction of three persons a distinction from God, or a distinction in God? Are we here making a distinction as frivolous as that "between the southern and south-eastern sides of a hair"? Do you not know the importance of the distinction? Think a moment, my good friend. If you say the distinction is a distinction from God, you deny the divine unity—assert three Gods; if you say it is a distinction in God, you simply assert one God in three persons, or three persons in one God, or one divine essence. If you deny both, your God is a dead unity in himself, not a living God.

The action of God ad intra is necessary, proceeds from the fulness of the divine nature, and the result is the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost. Now, can you understand what would be the consequence, if we made the action of God ad extra, or creation, proceed from the necessity of the divine nature? The first consequence would be that creation is God, for what proceeds from God by the necessity of his own nature is God, as the Arian controversy long ago taught the world. The second consequence would be that God is incomplete in himself, and has need to operate without, in order to complete himself, which really denies God, and therefore creation, everything, which is really the doctrine of Cousin, namely, God completes himself in his works. Can you understand now, dear reviewer, why we so strenuously deny that God creates or produces existences distinguishable from himself, through necessity? Cousin says that God creates from the intrinsic necessity of his own nature, that creation is necessary. You say he has retracted the expression. Be it so. But, with all deference, we assert that he has not retracted or explained away his doctrine, for it runs through his whole system; and as he nowhere makes the distinction between action ad intra and action ad extra, his very assertion that God is substance only in that he is cause, and cause only in that he is substance, implies the doctrine that God, if substance at all, cannot but create, or manifest himself without, or develop externally. What say we? Even the reviewer sneers at the distinction we have made, and at the efforts of theologians to save the freedom of God in creating. Thus, in the paragraph immediately succeeding our last extract, he says, "But all this quibbling comes from an ignorant terror, lest God's free-will should be attacked." The reviewer, on the page following, admits all we asserted, and falls himself, blindfold, as it were, into the very error he contends we falsely charge to the account of Cousin. "The necessity he (Cousin) speaks of is a metaphysical necessity, which no more destroys the free-will of God, than the metaphysical necessity of doing right, that is, obligation, destroys man's free-will." [Footnote 40] (P. 542.)

[Footnote 40: The reviewer, misled by the evasive answer of Cousin, supposes the objection urged against his doctrine, that creation is necessary, is, that it destroys the free-will of God; but that, though a grave objection, is not the one we insisted on; the real objection is, that if God is assumed to create from the necessity of his own nature, he is assumed not to create at all, for what is called his creation can be only an evolution or development of himself, and consequently producing nothing distinguishable in substance from himself, which is pure pantheism. Of course, all pantheism implies fatalism, for if we deny free-will in the cause, we must deny it in the effect; but it is not to escape fatalism, but pantheism that Cousin's doctrine of necessary Creation is denied, as we pointed out in our former article.]

Metaphysical necessity, according to the reviewer, p. 537, means real necessity, since he says, "Metaphysics is the science of the real," and therefore God is under a real necessity of creating. Yet it is to misrepresent Cousin to say that, according to him, creation is necessary! But assume that, by metaphysical, the reviewer means moral; then God is under a moral necessity, that is, morally bound to create, and consequently would sin if he did not. But we have more yet, in the same paragraph: "A power essentially creative cannot but create." Agreed. But to assert that God is essentially creative, is to assert that he is necessary creator, and that creation is necessary, for God cannot change his essence or belie it in his act. But this assertion of God as essentially creative, is precisely what we objected to in Cousin, and therefore, while asserting that God is infinitely and essentially active in his own being, we denied that he is essentially creative. He is free in his own nature to create or not, as he pleases. The reviewer does not seem to make much progress in defending Cousin against our criticisms.

7. That Cousin was knowingly and intentionally a pantheist, we have never pretended, but have given it as our belief that he was not. We do not think that he ever comprehended the essential principle of pantheism, or foresaw all the logical consequences of the principles he himself adopted and defended. But his doctrine, notwithstanding all his protests to the contrary, is undeniably pantheism, if any doctrine ever deserved to be called by that name. It is found not here and there in an incidental phrase, but is integral; enters into the very substance and marrow of his thought, and pervades all his writings. We felt it when we attempted to follow him as our master, and had the greatest difficulty in the world to give him a non-pantheistic sense, and never succeeded to our own satisfaction in doing it.

Cousin's pantheism follows necessarily from two doctrines that he, from first to last, maintains. First, there is only one substance. Second, Creation is necessary. He says in the Avertissement to the third edition of his Philosophical Fragments that he only in rare passages speaks of substance as one, and one only, and when he does so, he uses the word, not in its ordinary sense, but in the sense of Plato, of the most illustrious doctors of the church, and of the Holy Scripture in that sublime word, I AM that I AM; that is, in the sense of eternal, necessary, and self-existent Being. But this is not the case. The passages in which he asserts there is and can be only one substance, are not rare, but frequent, and to understand it in any of these passages in any but its ordinary sense, would make him write nonsense. He repeats a hundred times that there is, and can be, only one substance, and says, expressly, that substance is one or there is no substance, and that relative substances contradict and destroy the very idea of substance. He is talking, he says in his defence, of absolute substance. Be it so; interpret him accordingly. "Besides the one only absolute substance, there is and can be no substance, that is, no other one only absolute substance." Think you M. Cousin writes in that fashion? But we fully discussed this matter in our former article, and as the reviewer discreetly refrains from even attempting to show that we unjustly accused him of maintaining that there is and can be but one substance, we need not attempt any additional proof. The second doctrine, that creation is necessary, the reviewer concedes and asserts, "In Cousin, as we have attempted to explain, creation is not only possible, but NECESSARY," repeating Cousin's own words.

"As to Cousin's pantheism, if any one is disposed to believe that the systems of Spinoza and of Cousin have anything in common, we can only recommend to him a diligent study of both writers, freedom from prejudice, and a distrust of his own hastily formed opinions. It is too large a question to enter upon here, but we would like to ask the critic how he reconciles the two philosophers on the great question he last considered—the creation. In Spinoza, there is no creation. The universe is only the various modes and attributes of substance, subsisting with it from eternity in a necessary relation. In Cousin, creation, as we have attempted to explain, is 'not only possible but necessary.' The relation between the universe and the supreme Substance is not a necessary relation of substance and attribute, but a contingent relation of cause and effect, produced by a creative fiat." (P. 545.)

A necessitated creation is no proper creation at all. And Cousin denies that God does or can create from nothing; says God creates out of his own fulness, that the stuff of creation is his own substance, and time and again resolves what he calls creation into evolution or development, and makes the relation between the infinite and the finite, as we have seen, not that of creation, but that of generation, which is only development or explication. He also denies that individuals are substances, and says they have their substance in the one absolute substance. Let the reviewer read the preface to the first edition of the Fragments, reproduced without change in subsequent editions, and he will find enough more passages to the same effect, two at least in which he asserts that finite substances, not being able to exist in themselves without something beyond themselves, are very much like phenomena; and his very pretension is, that he has reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to two, substance or being, and phenomenon.

Now, the essential principle of pantheism is the assertion of one only substance and the denial of all finite substances. It is not necessary, in order to be a pantheist, to maintain that the apparent universe is an eternal mode or attribute of the one only substance, as Spinoza does; for pantheism may even assert the creation of modes and phenomena, which are perishable; its essence is in the assertion of one only substance, which is the ground or reality of all things, as Cousin maintains, and in denying the creation of finite substances, that can act or operate as second causes. Cousin, in his doctrine, does not escape pantheism, and we repeat, that he is as decided a pantheist as was Spinoza, though not precisely of the same school.

The reviewer says, p. 544, "We proceed to another specimen of the critic's accuracy; 'M. Cousin says pantheism is the divinization of nature, taken in its totality as God, But this is sheer atheism.'" Are we wrong? Here is what Cousin says in his own language: "Le panthéism est proprement la divinisation du tout, le grand tout donné comme Dieu, l'universe Dieu de la plupart de mes adversaires, de Saint-Simon, par example. C'est au fond un veritable athéisme." [Footnote 41] If he elsewhere gives a different definition, that is the reviewer's affair, not ours. We never pretended that Cousin never contradicts himself, or undertook to reconcile him with himself; but the reviewer should not be over-hasty in charging inaccuracy, misrepresentation, or ignorance where none is evident. He may be caught himself. The reviewer stares at us for saying Cousin's "exposition of the Alexandrian philosophy is a marvel of misapprehension." Can the reviewer say it is not? Has he studied that philosophy? We repeat, it is a marvel of misapprehension, both of Christian theology and of that philosophy itself. The Neoplatonists were pantheists and emanationists, and Cousin says the creation they asserted was a creation proper. Let that suffice to save us from the scathing lash of the reviewer.

[Footnote 41: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. pp. 18, 19.]

8. We said, in our article, "It was a great misfortune for M. Cousin that what little he knew of Catholic theology, caught up, apparently, at second hand, served only to mislead him. The great controversies on Catholic dogmas have enlightened the darkest passages of psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic theologian on a vantage-ground of which they who know it not are incapable of conceiving. Before him your Descartes, Spinozas, Kants, Fichtes, Hegels, and Cousins dwindle into pigmies." The reviewer replies to this:

"This is something new indeed, and we think the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, whom Cousin understood so intimately, and for whom he had so sincere an admiration, would be the last to claim an exclusive vantage-ground from their knowledge of the controversies on Catholic dogma. For these men, alike of the Oratory and of Port Royal, were Cartesians, and their faith was interwoven with their philosophy; it was not in opposition to it. And they knew that that philosophy was based upon a thorough understanding of the great 'controversies on Catholic dogma,' which had been carried on in the schools by laymen as well as by ecclesiastics.

"But who is the Romish theologian the critic refers to, and how is it he makes so little use of his 'vantage-ground'? Since Descartes brought modern philosophy into being by its final secularization, we do not recollect any theologian so eminent that all the great men he has named dwindle into pigmies before him. Unless, indeed, this should take place from their being so far out of the worthy man's sight and comprehension, as to be 'dwarfed by the distance,' as Coleridge says." (Pp. 546, 547.)

We referred to no Romish theologian in particular; but if the reviewer wants names, we give him the names of St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas of Aquino, Fonseca, Suarez, Malebranche, even Cardinal Gerdll, and Gioberti, the last, in fact, a contemporary of Cousin, whose Considerazioni sopra le dottrine del Cousin prove his immense superiority over him, and of the others named with him. Cousin may have admired the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, but intimately understand them as theologians, he did not, if we may judge from his writings; moreover, all the great churchmen of that century were not Frenchmen. As great, if not greater, were found among Italians, Spaniards, Poles, and Germans, though less known to the Protestant world. Has the reviewer forgotten, or has he never known, the great men that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries flourished in the great religious orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans, the Augustinians, and especially the Jesuits—men whose learning, genius, and ability were surpassed only by their humility and sanctity?

But we spoke not of Cousin's little knowledge of churchmen, but of his little knowledge of Catholic theology. The reviewer here, probably, is not a competent judge, not being himself a Catholic theologian, and being comparatively a stranger to Catholic theology; but we will accept even his judgment in the case. Cousin denies that there is anything in his philosophy not in consonance with Christianity and the church; he denies that his philosophy impugns the dogma of the Word or the Trinity, and challenges proof to the contrary. Yet what does the reviewer think of Cousin's resolution of the Trinity, as cited some pages back, in his own language, into God, nature, and humanity? He says God is triple. "Cest-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité." Is that in consonance with Catholic theology?

Then, of the Word, after having proved in his way that the ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good are necessary and absolute ideas, and identified them with the impersonal reason, and the impersonal reason with the Logos, he asks what then? Are they God? No, gentlemen, they are not God, he answers, but the Word of God, thus plainly denying the Word of God to be God. Does that prove he knew intimately Catholic theology? What says the reviewer of Cousin's doctrine of inspiration and revelation? That doctrine is, that inspiration and revelation are the spontaneous operations of the impersonal reason as distinguished from the reflective operations of the personal reason, which is pure rationalism. Is that Catholic theology, or does it indicate much knowledge of Catholic theology, to say it is in consonance with that theology?

In his criticism on the Alexandrians or Neoplatonists, he blames them for representing the multiple, the finite, what they call creation, as a fall, and for not placing them on the same line with unity, the infinite, or God considered in himself. Is that in accordance with Catholicity, or is it a proof of his knowledge of Catholic theology to assert that it is, and to challenge the world to prove the contrary? But enough. No Catholic theologian, not dazzled by Cousin's style, or carried away by his glowing eloquence and brilliant generalizations, can read his philosophical works without feeling that he was no Christian believer, and that he neither knew nor respected Catholic faith or theology. In his own mind he reduced Catholic faith to the primitive beliefs of the race, inspired by the impersonal reason, and as he never contradicted these as he understood them, he persuaded himself that his philosophy did not impugn Christianity and the church.

9. The reviewer says:

"One more extract, by way of capping the climax. Seemingly ignorant of Cousin's criticism upon De Bonald's now exploded theory of language, and his exposition of De Biran's, the critic thinks, 'He would have done well to have studied more carefully the remarkable work of De Bonald; had he done so, he might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language.' Has this man not read what Cousin has written, on the origin, purpose, uses, and effects of language, that he represents him as believing that the reflective reason can operate without language, without signs!" (P. 547.)

If M. Cousin maintains that the reflective reason cannot operate without language, as in some sense he does, it is in a sense different from that in which we implied he had need to learn that fact. We were objecting to the spiritualism—we should say intellectism, or noeticism—which he professed, that it assumed that we can have pure intellections. Cousin's doctrine is that, though we apprehend the intelligible only on the occasion of some sensible affection, yet we do apprehend it without a sensible medium. This doctrine we denied, and maintained, in opposition, that, being the union of soul and body, man has, and can have in this life, no pure intellections, and that we apprehend the intelligible, as distinguished from the sensible, only through the medium of the sensible or of a sensible representation, as taught by Aristotle and St. Thomas. The sensists teach that we can apprehend only the sensible, and that our science is limited to our sensations and inductions therefrom; the pure transcendentalists, or pure spiritualists, assert that we can and do apprehend immediately the noetic, or, as they say, the spiritual; the peripatetics hold that we apprehend it, but only through the medium of sensible representation; Cousin, in his eclecticism, makes the sensation the occasion of the apprehension of the intelligible, but not its medium. On his theory the sensible is no more a medium of noetic apprehension than on that of the transcendentalists; for the occasion of doing a thing is very different from the medium of doing it.

Now, language is for us the sign or sensible representation of the intelligible, and, as every thought includes the apprehension of the intelligible, therefore to every thought language, of some sort, is essential. The reviewer stumbles, and supposes that we are accusing Cousin of being ignorant of what he is not ignorant, because he supposes that we mean by reflective reason the discursive as distinguished from the intuitive faculty of the soul, which, if he had comprehended at all our philosophy, he would have seen is not the case. Intuition with us is ideal, not empirical. It is not our act, whether spontaneous or reflective, but a divine judgment affirmed by the Creator to us, and constituting us capable of intelligence, of reason, and reasoning. Reflective reason is our reason, and the reflex of the divine judgment, or the divine reason, directly and immediately affirmed to us by the Creator in the very act of creating us. Not only discursion, then, but what both Cousin and the reviewer call intuition, or immediate apprehension, is an operation of the reflective reason. Hence, to the operation of reason in the simple, direct apprehension of the intelligible, as well as in discursion or reasoning, language of some sort, as a sensible medium, is necessary and indispensable. When the reviewer will prove to us that Cousin held, or in any sense admitted this, he will tell us something of Cousin that we did not know before, and we will then give him leave to abuse us to his heart's content.

But we have already dwelt too long on this attempt at criticism on us in the Church Review—a Review from which, considering the general character of Episcopalians, we expected, if not much profound philosophy or any very rigid logic, at least the courtesy and fairness of the well-bred gentleman, such as we might expect from a cultivated and polished pagan. We regret to say that we have been disappointed. It sets out with a promise to discuss the character of Dr. Brownson as a philosopher, and confines itself to a criticism on an article in our magazine without the slightest allusion to a single one of that gentleman's avowed writings. Even supposing, which the Review has no authority for supposing, that Dr. Brownson wrote the article on Cousin, that article was entitled to be treated gravely and respectfully; for no man in this country can speak with more authority on Cousin's philosophy, for no one in this country has had more intimate relations with the author, or was accounted by him a more trust worthy expositor of his system.

As to the reviewer's own philosophical speculations, which he now and then obtrudes, we have, for the most part, passed them over in silence, for they have not seemed to us to have the stuff to bear refuting. The writer evidently has no occasion to pride himself on his aptitude for philosophical studies, and is very far from understanding either the merits or defects of such a man as Victor Cousin, in every respect so immeasurably above him. We regret that he should have undertaken the defence of the great French philosopher, for he had little qualification for the task. He has provoked us to render more glaring the objectionable features of Cousin's philosophy than we wished. If he sends us a rejoinder, we shall be obliged to render them still more glaring, and to sustain our statements by citation of passages from his works, book and page marked, so express, so explicit, and so numerous, as to render it impossible for the most sceptical to doubt the justice of our criticism.

The Tears Of Jesus.

"And Martha said: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ... Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again. ... And Mary saith to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ... And Jesus wept."

DISCIPLE.

"Kind Lord,
Dost Martha's love prefer?
Cheer Mary's heavy heart likewise,
And say to her,
Thy brother once again shall rise.

"Why fall those voiceless tears
In sad reply
To her, as if thine ears
Heard not her cry?

"What opens sorrow's deep abyss
At Mary's word?
When Martha spoke, no grief like this
Thy spirit stirred."

MASTER.

"My child,
Remember what I said to her—
The elder of the twain,
When she, the busy minister,
Of Mary did complain.

"Know, they who choose the better part
And love but me alone.
Ask only that my loving heart
Shall make their griefs mine own.

"To Martha is the promise given
That Lazarus shall rise from sleep;
But Mary is the bride of heaven—
With her shall not the bridegroom weep?"

DISCIPLE.

"Kind Lord,
When breaks my heart in agony,
Dost ever shed a tear with me?"

MASTER.

"My Child,
Wilt all things else for me resign?
Wilt others' love for mine forego
Wilt find thy joy alone in me?
Then will I count thy griefs as mine.
And with thy tears my tears shall flow
In loving sympathy."

Sister Simplicia.

"What a wet, disagreeable day it is! If papa hadn't bought the tickets last evening, I don't believe I should have come out to-day, even for the sake of hearing Ristori in Marie Antoinette. She can't do better than she does in Mary Stuart, and I already wish ourselves back in your cosy little library again; besides, I haven't half finished looking at those curious old illuminated books of your father's, and, as we go home to-morrow, I fear I shan't have time, for papa has an invitation for us all this evening."

So spoke Anita Hartridge as she and Mary Kenton took their places in the Broadway stage on their way to a matinee at the French Theatre. Anita's father was a Baltimore merchant. He was often in the city buying goods, but this was the first time he had brought his daughter with him. The two girls were warm friends. They had been educated together, and it was not yet a year since they had bidden adieu to the convent walls, the one to thread, motherless, the gay mazes of Baltimore society; the other to come home as a household angel to the father and mother, who were already beginning to grow old. It has been a happy week, a week all too soon coming to an end; and Mary Kenton sits thinking sadly, so wrapped in her reveries that she does not even raise her eyes when the stage stops to take in more passengers.

She is thinking of Anita, of her beauty and brilliancy, her quick, flashing, Southern gayety, and yet deep, true, sympathetic heart; and she wonders what will become of her friend, with no mother to restrain her impulsiveness and a father who thinks only of gratifying her lightest wish. How gladly she would share with her her own mother's tender care; and if she could but be taken from this whirl of amusement for a short time; but no; they return to-morrow. Well, here they are at Union Square, and Anita is speaking softly.

"Mary, did you ever see so beautiful a face? No, not opposite; over there in the corner next the door—that younger Sister of Mercy. She looks like Elizabeth of Hungary. I have been watching her all this time, and she has never looked up once. She seems inspired. Do you believe any one can be so happy as she looks, I mean any one who leads so self-denying a life?"

But there is no time to reply. They leave the omnibus and are soon entranced under the magic power of the great tragedian.

"I wish I were Ristori," said Anita, as they left the theatre. "To have her power and to be admired as she is admired; oh! that were grand. That were a life worth living. What is it to live as we do—to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day again—no grand purpose; and when we die, have the world go on just the same as before? Such lives are not worth living. I wish I could be great as Madame de Staël, or beautiful as Madame Recamier."

"'O world! so few the years we live,
Would that the life that thou dost give
Were life indeed!'"

repeated Mary slowly; "and yet, there are other lives that I had rather take for my model than any of these."

"Yes, I know, Mary. You would take rather the life of some saint, St. Elizabeth herself, perhaps; you are always so good and gentle; and Sister Agnes used to say that she knew you would come back to her some time as a sister yourself. But I am not at all so; I love the world, and society, and amusement, and am only dissatisfied because I am neither so brilliant nor beautiful as I should like to be. I feel that your ideal is the better one, but I have not strength of character enough to live anything but a gay, butterfly life. You know my favorite song is, 'I'd be a butterfly,' and indeed I do wish for beauty more than anything else in the world. And yet, after all, that face that I saw under the plain black bonnet was of a heavenly beauty that I cannot forget. Page's copy of the Madonna della Seggiola that we admired so much yesterday is scarcely more beautiful."

"And her life has been as beautiful as her face, they say. But there is our stage. Let us hurry a little; mother will be waiting dinner for us already."

A low rap at Mrs. Kenton's door. It is the hour after dinner, and Dr. Kenton and Mr. Hartridge are in the library, alternately discussing business and their meerschaums. There are two hours yet before the ladies need dress for the evening. Mrs. Kenton is sitting in her large chair before the grate, and the girls come in quietly and draw up two low ottomans at her feet. The gas is not yet lighted, and the twilight throws long, deep shadows from the curtains and the quaint, old-fashioned high bedposts.

"Mother, we have seen Sister Simplicia to-day. Anita very much wishes to hear her history, and you have never told it to me yet. It is just the night to tell a story, just such a night as we read of, 'without, the snow falling thick and fast, but within a bright fire throwing its cheerful light around the room and lighting up the countenance of the narrator,'" said Mary, smiling.

"I imagine the fire you are quoting about was of hickory logs in a great, wide fireplace; and this is only a city grate," said her mother in the same tone; and then more seriously, "but I will tell you the story, since you wish it, and all the more readily as I was thinking of her at the moment you entered.

"Eight years ago Rose Harding was the belle of our circle. I loved her as I would have loved a little sister of my own, had I been blessed with one. She was the younger sister of my dearest friend; and when Rachel died, she left Rose half in my care, for their mother was dead and the father only too indulgent. But Rose was not easily spoiled, and looking back now at this distance, I think that I have never known another that was her equal. Mr. Harding was wealthy, and she had all that heart could wish. Of course she was much sought after and much loved; but few were made unhappy through her, for she was far too generous and too conscientious to be a coquette; and when one evening she came to me, blushing and trembling, and told me that Willis Courtney loved her—"

"Willis Courtney, the son of papa's old partner?" asked Anita.

"You have seen him?"

"Yes; he was my ideal when I was still a very little girl. But then I was sent away to be educated, and never saw him afterward."

"He was worthy of Rose, though very different. How proud he was of her! I loved to watch them together. He was so gentle and thoughtful of every little attention, and she trusted and honored him so fully. It seemed there never could be a brighter future in store for any than for these two, and surely there never could be any more deserving of the choicest blessings of earth. Mr. Harding was happy in his child's happiness, and Willis only waited a visit from his father to give him the glad surprise. Mr. Courtney was at that time the senior partner in your father's firm, Anita! Willis was in the second year of his law studies, and in less than a year he could look forward to establishing a home; for his father was growing old, and had told him often that he only wished to see him happily settled in life before he died. And so the weeks passed in happiness, and tomorrow Mr. Courtney should come. I shall never forget how anxiously Rose awaited this coming—expectant, hopeful, timid. 'Willis says his father is a stern man. I shall be so afraid of him. Perhaps he will not approve of me'—with a half-frightened laugh; 'I do so want him to like me. Willis honors him so, and yet says he always stood in awe of him. Do you think he will like me? I wish to-morrow were past, I dread it so; and yet Willis says he is sure to love me, and that he will be so glad to have a daughter.'

"And Willis was at the depot, impatient to see his father again, and still more impatient to have the crowning seal of approval set upon his choice.

"At length the shrill whistle of the distant train, a few anxious glances through the darkness, and the bright red light of the engine glides past slowly. Why is it that this red glare, shining as it passes, seems to throw a sort of supernatural glare over the platform and the waiting figures? A strange, weird feeling comes over him. Is it himself standing there, or is he, too, only some phantom of his own imagination? In a moment he lives over his whole past life in one comprehensive flash, as people who are drowning are said to do. But the train has stopped, and there is his father's bald head among the crowd of rushing passengers. Willis passes his hand quickly over his forehead, as if to brush away the illusion, and advances to meet him.

"It is a glad meeting. Mr. Courtney looks at his son, and, as he looks, the benignant smile on his face broadens and deepens. It is something to have delved in the counting-house all these years, and bent his shoulders over the dull ledgers, that these shoulders may have no need to bend, and that this intellect shall have the means of making the best of itself; and, as he walks beside him to the waiting carriage, he says in his heart, 'There is none equal to my son.'

"And now they sit in their parlor at the '—— House,' and the bottle of old port is almost emptied, for Mr. Courtney is fond of good wine. The waiter has arranged the fire, and brought in a fresh bottle, and father and son are alone.

"'And now, Willis, who is she, this divinest of her sex; and when am I to see her?'

"'To-morrow, or this evening if you prefer. Mr. Harding is almost an invalid, and so spends his evenings at home, and Rose seldom leaves him.'

"'Harding! What Harding is this? You always spoke of her as "Rose," and I never thought to ask her family name,' said Mr. Courtney, in ill-suppressed anxiety.

"'Thomas Harding, formerly of New-Orleans. Why, father, what is it; are you ill? What can I do for you?' said Willis, rising from his chair quickly, as Mr. Courtney arose and staggered toward the mantle piece. He stood there, resting his folded arms on it, with his head so buried in them that the son could see nothing of his face. John Courtney was not a man to be approached easily. Whatever the joys or sorrows of his life might have been, his son was as ignorant of them as the stranger who met him just an hour ago. So Willis stood now at a little distance, not feeling sufficient freedom to approach, and anxiously awaiting some word or movement that should give him permission to speak. But none such came, and, after a few moments, Mr. Courtney raised his head, saying, 'A glass of wine, Willis. I felt a little faint a moment ago. Travelling is tiresome work for an old man.' And Willis filled the glass silently; for there was a look in the white face that chilled, while it awed him—a look of determination, and yet of indecision at the same time.

"It seemed as if a cold, misty atmosphere had suddenly entered the room; and the two men spent the remainder of the evening in a vain effort to sustain a conversation upon all manner of general subjects, which the son seemed always to succeed in shaping till it just approached the subject in which alone he was then interested, and the father always to turn it off just in time to prevent its touching. At length Willis arose, saying:

"'But your journey has tired you very much, father. I will go now, that you may have a long night's rest.'

"'Yes, yes. I am no longer so young as I was once.'

"But after his son had gone, he forgot his weariness, and spent the night in walking up and down the length of the parlor, and drinking wine, as the waiter said in the morning, 'like a high-bred gentleman;' and when the morning came, the look of indecision had passed away, and the determination alone remained.

"And Willis passed the long hours of darkness in a nightmare of undefined dread, half asleep, but yet entirely conscious of all around; a state that confused imagination and reality, till the most frightful dreams became impressed with all the power of real events—so real that only the morning, with the unchanged, familiar face of the servant could make him feel certain that they were all waking dreams, and that he had not lived a horrible year. But the cold water, and the cheerful breakfast-table, and all the invigorating morning influences served to restore him; and he laughed at the absurd fancies, and went around to his father's hotel, wondering that he should have felt so discouraged and uncomfortable in his presence last evening, and mentally resolving to let no such chill come over their intercourse this morning.

"As he stepped into the hall, he noticed the well-known baggage, with the initials, 'J. C.,' and said to the waiter:

"'What carelessness is this? You have never carried up my father's baggage.'

"'As soon as you had gone last evening,' said the waiter, 'I went up to his door, sir, and asked if I should send it up then; but he said, "No," as he should leave early in the morning, sir.'

"Willis hurried up and found the old man at breakfast, or rather sitting there beside it, for he had evidently eaten nothing, although he said he had finished.

"'Why, father! your baggage—'

"'Yes, yes, a telegram. Must return immediately; and now sit down a moment. There is half an hour yet before going to the train. When do you finish your studies?'

"'In two months.'

"'So I thought—so I thought. There is no hurry about your beginning to practise, and I need your assistance in my business just at present. There are some speculations in the West that must be attended to. There is money in them, but I can't trust Stephens to go alone, and I want to send you with him. I shall make all arrangements for you to start at the end of two months.'

"'But, father—Rose?'

"'Time enough. There's nothing will test your affections like a little absence. Besides, you aren't either of you old enough to know what you want yet. If in two years you both feel as you do now, why, then we'll see about matters; and you know your means don't depend on your practice; besides, you'll get along better in that for seeing something of the world before you commence. I'm getting to be an old man, Willis, and need my son's help a little now. Surely he won't make any objections to doing what I desire?'

"Filial respect and affection was a strong trait in Willis Courtney's character. Disobedience to the father whom he had always feared, and to whom he was really so much indebted, was a thing of which he had never thought before, and thought of now only to put away the idea as one unworthy of him; and Rose, who loved her own father devotedly, respected him the more for his duty to his; and so it came about that when the two months had passed, he went to California with Stephens, the head clerk of the firm, and Rose had only the long, tender letters; and Mr. Harding, who had never been dissatisfied while Willis was here, grew suddenly restless, and longed to travel.

"'As long as Rose was so happy, I was contented here,' he said, 'but now she is often sad, and I think a little change will be good for both of us. I have travelled too much in my life to be satisfied to settle down in one spot and remain there. I must see Italy once again before I die.'

"And so their passage was taken, and one morning we stood on the deck of an English steamer to bid them 'God speed;' and after we had come on shore again, stood long watching the ship till it was far down the bay.

"At first Rose wrote long, cheerful, descriptive letters. A summer at a German watering-place had almost entirely restored Mr. Harding's health, and in the early autumn they began their tour, intending to visit Vienna, and, passing directly from there to Venice, make a short stay in two or three cities of Northern Italy, and then go on to Rome to spend the winter.

"Letters came seldom now—it was at the beginning of our civil war—and when they came, there was no longer any mention of Willis, nor of glad anticipations of return; and later, in a letter dated at Brescia, she wrote: 'I am in the city of Angela da Brescia. How was it possible for her to be what she was? I cannot understand it. To rise up out of the shadow of a great grief, and to go forth cheerfully into the world and work to do good and make others happy. It needs more than human will. God alone can give the strength to do this, and yet if he does it sometimes, as he did for her, why not always?'

"And still there was no mention of any personal grief; but the whole tone of her letter was sad, and I felt that something more than a mere transient annoyance had occurred to thus destroy her accustomed cheerfulness.

"At first, the genial climate and the revival of old associations—for he had spent several winters there in his youth—had seemed to give Mr. Harding a new life, and almost a second youth, while they visited the familiar places, and he pointed out to his daughter the glorious relics of past architecture and the grand works of the old masters; but it was only for a time, and when we heard again, his strength was failing rapidly. At Rome they had met an old friend who was staying there with his wife, so they joined company, and planned their return together for the ensuing summer.

"And all this time we had only heard of Willis Courtney that he had, without returning home, joined the Union army as a private, and that his father, whose sympathies were entirely Southern, was very much displeased; and, in addition, that he had sold out his interest in the business, some said in order to retire and enjoy his wealth, others, to avoid a financial crisis which he imagined to be impending.

"In May came another letter from Rose. The time of their return was uncertain; her father was feeble, and wished neither to leave the mild climate, nor to risk the danger of a voyage, till he should be stronger. And in reply to some question of mine—'I have heard no word from Willis Courtney this winter, and even last autumn his letters had changed and were no longer like him. But I cannot write of this. I do not understand it all. ... I have spent almost the entire day in St. Peter's. I do this often. It is God's grandest monument on earth, and I never feel so near him as here. I never truly felt the love of holiness before; but here, under the influence of the inimitable grandeur of his church, and in the presence of his earthly representative, I can almost shut out the vanities of the world, and bow before God alone, worshipping him in supreme love and reverence. I love the beautiful rites of the church. Ah! how gladly I would lie down beneath the shadow of her walls, and sleep the last sleep—or if that may not be, take the vows which should make me the bride of heaven alone, and shut out for ever the coldness and deceptions of the world. But my poor father needs me so much, and is so entirely dependent upon me, that I cannot leave him while he lives. He is fearfully changed, and has grown so much older within the last two months that you would scarcely recognize him now. I hope he may soon be better, and am sure he must be, for he is always so cheerful.'

"But this was not to be, and after lingering a few weeks longer, he died amid the scenes he had loved so well, having first exacted a promise from Rose that she would return to New York with Mr. and Mrs. Rowland.

"They had a pleasant voyage, good weather and a smooth sea, and the vessel glided along, making every day her full number of knots, and making glad the hearts of the passengers, who were returning to home and friends.

"Mr. and Mrs. Rowland spent much of the time on deck, and Rose sat near them, always with a book lying open on her lap; to the careless observer she appeared to be reading, but those who, after a few days, began to notice the sad face, noticed, too, that the leaves of the book were never turned and that her glance rested always on the sea. These were days of rest. The slow rolling of the waves lent her an artificial calmness. The events of the last few months had stunned her, and this was the transition state before reaction. A sort of veil seemed to have been cast between her vision and the past, and the future seemed a blank, a desert that she had no wish to explore, and before which she shut her eyes. She seemed to be falling into that dreamy melancholy which so often precedes insanity, and Mrs. Rowland watched her anxiously, and Mr. Rowland made every exertion to distract her attention, making every little excuse to get her to walk on deck, and to notice some peculiar cloud or singular fish. And so the days passed till they were within two days of New York; then the pilot came on board, and they began to realize, for the first time, that they were almost home. He brought the last papers, three days old now, and the hitherto quiet passengers were all excitement, gathered here and there in little groups eagerly discussing the news he had brought, for those were times full of interest, and this news was the defeat at Bull Run.

"Mr. Rowland had put a paper into Rose's hands, and as she read, she became first interested; then the quick blood mounted to her face, and Mr. Rowland remarked:

"'You have not yet forgotten that you are an American, Miss Harding.'

"She replied quickly and continued reading. Presently the paper dropped from her hands; her face became deadly pale, and she leaned heavily against the rail for support. Mr. Rowland took up the paper and searched the page she had been reading; but in vain; he saw nothing that should have startled her, and so turned away, thinking he had been mistaken, thus leaving her alone to accustom herself to the reality of what she had read.

"What she had read? It was only a name, and that the name of a common soldier.

"In looking over the list of the names of those found dead on the battle-field of Bull Run, she had found that of Willis Courtney.

"The next day they reached Sandy Hook. But it was already evening, and they were obliged to anchor over night, and defer running up to the city till the next morning. There were many impatient at this detention, but none more so than Rose Harding. What has come over her? her kind friends asked each other in vain; but she was no longer indifferent, and her face expressed a cheerful determination. It was a conviction of duty, and a resolution to fulfil it. All the night after the news, she had lain awake and pictured to herself the horrors of lying wounded on the battle-field, and of dying alone in the cold and darkness. She had loved Willis Courtney with the full depths of a first matured affection, and she loved him now, despite the indifference and coldness with which he had rewarded that love. And now he was dead, and whatever had come between them on earth had passed away; and, strange as it seemed to her, she felt that he had come back to her, and that they were nearer together than they had ever been. But he was dead, and he had died in a noble cause, and she felt ashamed of her own selfish grief, that had shut out the world and its cares and sorrows. The old words came ringing in her ears:

'The noblest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man.'

"Had he not died nobly? And then she contrasted her own life with his. What had she done to make any of God's creatures better or happier! 'Nothing! nothing!' Then came bitter regrets, and accusations against her destiny. Why had she not been permitted to be near him in the last struggle? Had not her own pride been perhaps somewhat to blame? He had suffered alone.

"Then suddenly he seemed to stand beside her, and pointing upward, to repeat to her those words of Christ: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'

"It was a revelation. What God had done for Angela da Brescia, he had done for her. Darkness had passed away, and in its place was light, and the warmth of renewed life. 'Unto the least of these.' Willis was gone. On earth she could do nothing more for him; but there were others, others who were laying down their lives as nobly and in the same cause; for these she could work; and whatever she could do 'unto the least,' she should be doing for him and for Christ.

"It was no mere momentary enthusiasm. She came home to join the devoted band of the Sisters of Mercy, and among these she was one of the bravest and truest. No duties were too arduous and no dangers too great, for this child of luxury to encounter. Herself, and the great wealth which she had inherited from her father, she consecrated to the service of God. Like the noble Paula of old, who went forth from pagan Rome to assemble around her a community of sisters in Palestine, 'she was piteous to them that were sick, and comforted them, and served them right humbly,' and 'laid the pillows aright' with a tender hand; and many a poor soldier thanked her for his life, and many more blessed with dying lips the name of her who had robbed the grim messenger of his terrors, and shown the light of God's love gilding the horizon of the valley of the shadow of death.

"And when the war was ended, she came back to New York, to continue, in another field, her labors of love. Here she visited hospitals and prisons, carrying the promises of the Father's forgiveness to the repentant, and words of comfort and consolation to those who were sick and weary of life.

"One morning, about a year ago, as she was visiting prisoners in company with an older sister, she noticed in the Tombs a new prisoner, who attracted her attention by his dignified bearing, and evident reluctance to speak to any of his companions; and as he turned, and she caught a view of his profile, she was startled with a feeling that it was familiar to her; and yet she had surely never seen the man. But he seemed glad to talk of religion; and when she left, she gave him a pocket Bible to read until she should next visit the prison. But all that day the face seemed to haunt her. It came between her and her prayers; it visited her dreams in the night, and hung over her like an incubus that would not away at her entreaties; and she found herself looking forward to her next visit with a mixed feeling of anxiety and curiosity. When at last she went again, the old man recognized her, and asked suddenly, in a trembling voice:

"'Are you Rose Harding?'

"'I am Sister Simplicia. I was Rose Harding,' she replied, shocked at the suddenness and eagerness of the question.

"He looked at her wonderingly, and then said:

"'Are you happy? But what use to ask. Your face and voice show it. See here,' he added, and handed her back the open Bible. It was one that Willis had given her years ago, and on the fly-leaf to which the man now opened was written—

'Rose Harding.
From Willis Courtney.'

"This was the one relic she had kept of her past life. She had fastened those leaves together with thin white wafers, so that the names should be invisible, and had felt still that his book must be especially blessed, and so had given it often to prisoners to read. She had intended to destroy everything that should remind her of Rose Harding; but these names, written in his hand, she could not destroy, but had thought to hide them even from herself.

"And this man had torn them open. It was as if he had committed a sacrilege; as if he had opened the grave of the dead; for were these not buried long ago?

"But he was speaking hurriedly:

"'I am John Courtney. I have something to tell you; something that has hunted me down for years, and driven me here at last.' And she listened.

"He had been her father's confidential clerk years ago in New Orleans. In an evil moment, he had allowed himself to take a small sum from the drawer; for his salary, large though it was, was not sufficient to meet the expenses of a young man who loved gay company, drank much and gambled more. It was not discovered, and so he had helped himself again, and Mr. Harding, who was scarcely older than himself, and had absolute confidence in him, had still made no discovery; but when it became time to balance the yearly accounts, he knew it could be concealed no longer, and so one night he took enough more to pay travelling expenses, and to help him in starting into some business for himself, and left on a night-boat for the North. He remained secreted in St. Louis till he had discovered through the papers that Mr. Harding had no intention of prosecuting him; then, after having adopted the precaution of changing his appearance as much as possible, and his name from James Rellerton to John Courtney, had come to Baltimore and gone into business, in which he had prospered, and had married into one of the first families in the place. His wife had died while Willis was yet a child, and he had centered his pride and affection upon this only boy. For his sake he had worked untiringly, and had showered his wealth upon him, that he might never know the temptation that had overcome his father. But from making any acknowledgment to Mr. Harding his pride shrunk. He had, indeed, sent back the money he had taken, but to see Mr. Harding he had felt to be impossible. James Rellerton was dead, and John Courtney must stand without reproach before the world, and no man living must know that there was any connection between the two.

"But when Willis had spoken the name of Thomas Harding as that of the father of his affianced bride, it seemed that retribution, from being so long delayed, had come upon him with double harshness, as the interest of a debt that has run long is sometimes greater than the principal itself. Should he destroy the happiness of the son for whom he would have given his life, or run the risk of being recognized by Mr. Harding?

"He could do neither; and besides, would Mr. Harding allow his daughter to marry the son of James Rellerton?

"Then he had resolved to separate them, and let time and events decide the future means to be employed. It had been a double game. If Willis had been instructed to watch Stephens, Stephens had been no less definitely instructed to watch Willis; and when, after six months, he had reported that the correspondence between him and Rose was undiminished, he had received instructions that he must 'see to it that it should cease gradually;' and so the letters had been intercepted, a few times changed, and then no longer sent in any form. The father had said:

"'My son will blame her, and his pride will prevent his suffering.'

"But when did pride prevent suffering? It may prevent the showing of any sign, and it did here; but Willis had been one of the first volunteers, and then he had fallen; and the old man had been left desolate with a double crime upon his conscience. He had no object in attending to business and making money now, so had sold his interest, and tried to find in travel that alleviation from thought which could alone make life endurable. But he could not leave himself—the one thing he desired to leave—and an attraction beyond his control had brought him back to New Orleans. Here the necessity for excitement had again led him into the old temptation of gambling. But he was not always successful; and when the Mississippi was again open, he had travelled on the boats, at first with better success, but at last had become too well known, and in looking for a new field, had fallen in with a band of counterfeiters, and so had come to New York in their employ.

"And this was the end of it all.

"At first Rose had listened with an intense loathing for the man. Had he not wronged her father, and blighted her own youth, and even chased his own son to his death; and was he not a counterfeiter and a gambler; an outcast before God and man?

"Then, as she turned her glance, it fell upon her cross, and it brought back the scene on Calvary and the face of Him who had prayed 'Father, forgive them.' Then she looked again at the old man, and, trembling with emotion, he cast himself on the floor at her feet, crying:

"'Merciful sister, pray for me!'

"And the peace of God came back to her, as she clasped her hands, and raising to heaven her eyes filled with the tears of a gentle pity, prayed aloud:

"'O Jesus! be merciful; and deal with me even as I deal with this repentant man.'

"The Bible of his son first, and the labors of the appointed ministers of God afterward, brought him again under the benediction of the church. But she it was who stood beside him in the last struggle, and closed the eyes with more tenderness than a daughter; for hers was that holy love, born of heaven and earth, which dwells only in the consecrated heart."

......

Mrs. Kenton had finished. The long shadows had grown longer and mingled together, till it had become only darkness; and then the moon had arisen and was shining with a pale light through the masses of heavy clouds. They arose silently and went each to her own room. But for Anita Hartridge this night was the turning-point in life. The "butterfly" was such no longer, and in its place grew up the noble woman.

Did Sister Simplicia, as she knelt at her prayers that night, know the work she had done for her Master that day?

The Merit Of Good Works

In a recent article we endeavored to explain the catholic doctrine, that good works as well as faith are an essential condition of justification. This implies, of course, that good works are meritorious, and that eternal life is due to them as a recompense. We wish to elucidate this point a little more fully, and to show what is the nature of that merit which is ascribed to good works proceeding from the principle of faith informed by charity.

In the widest sense of the word, merit signifies any kind of excellence or worthiness. In this sense, a picture is said to have merit; and purely physical or intellectual perfections, which are merely natural gifts, are said to merit admiration and praise. In the strict sense of the word, merit signifies the quality by which certain free, voluntary acts entitle the person who performs them to an adequate recompense. It is in this sense that merit is ascribed to the good works of a just man. These works are said by Catholic theologians to deserve eternal life by a merit of condignity and a title of justice.

What is meant by merit of condignity? It means that there is an equality of dignity or intrinsic worth and value between the work performed and the recompense bestowed. This is easily understood in regard to merely human affairs. It is not easy to understand, however, how a creature can deserve the reward of eternal life from the Creator. Good works, however excellent they may be in the finite order, and as measured by a human standard, appear to be totally incommensurate with the infinite, and therefore wanting in all condignity with an infinite recompense. So far as the mere physical entity of the works is concerned, this is really so. The gift of a cup of cold water to a person suffering from thirst, the recital of a few prayers, a trivial act of self-denial, evidently bear no proportion to eternal beatitude. Neither does a life like that of St. Paul, filled with labors, or a long course of penance and prayer like that of St. Romuald, or a martyrdom like that of St. Polycarp. The mere extent or duration of the labor or suffering, considered as something endured for the sake of God, is nothing in comparison with the crown of immortal life. The condignity of good works is not derived from an equality or proportion between their physical extent and duration and the physical extent and duration of the recompense. It is derived from an equality in kind between the interior principle from which good works proceed, and the interior principle of beatitude. The interior principle of good works is charity; not a merely natural charity, but a supernatural, a divine charity, produced by the Holy Spirit. Good works proceed from a supernatural principle, and are performed by a concurrence of the human will with the divine Spirit. They have, therefore, a superhuman, divine quality, and are elevated to the supernatural order, the same order to which eternal beatitude belongs. They are, therefore, equal to it in dignity in this sense, that they are equally supernatural. The principle of divine charity in the soul is, moreover, the germ of the eternal life itself, which is promised as the reward of the acts which proceed from charity. The life of grace is the life of glory begun, and the life of glory is the life of grace consummated. The germ is equal in grade and quality with the tree which it produces, though not equal in extent and perfection. In the same manner, a little act, like that of giving a cup of water to another for the love of God, although trivial in itself, contains a principle which is capable of uniting the soul to God for all eternity. It is the principle of divine love, making the soul like to God, imitating on a small scale those acts of the love of God toward men which are the most stupendous, and therefore, making the soul worthy to be loved by God with a love of complacency similar in kind to that love which he has toward himself.

Again, the value and merit of services rendered by one person to another are estimated, not alone by the substance of the services rendered, but by the quality of the person who renders them. An article of small utility or cost is sometimes more valued as a token of affection from a dear friend, or as a sign of esteem and honor from a person of high rank, than a large sum of money would be which had been accumulated by the industry of a servant. The good works of a just man fall under this category. They are estimated according to the quality and rank of the person who performs them. The just man is the friend of God, and the services he renders to God are valued accordingly, not as so much work done, but as tokens of love and fidelity. As a friend of God, the just man is a person of high rank in the scale of being. He is a "partaker of the divine nature," as St. Peter distinctly affirms. His human nature is exalted and sublimated to a certain similitude with the nature of God; and the acts which proceed from it have a corresponding dignity and elevation, proportioned to their end, which is eternal life, or the consummation of the union between human nature and the divine nature in eternal beatitude. The just man is the adopted son of God the Father, through his union with God the Son incarnate. This adoption into a participation with Jesus Christ in his sonship reflects the dignity and excellence of the person of Christ upon his person and upon all his works. As a member of Christ and a son of God, his person and his works are superior to the whole natural order, and, therefore, there is nothing which has the relation of condignity toward them except the supernatural order itself.

It is evident, therefore, that regenerate nature has condignity with the state of glory, and that the good works which proceed from it have condignity with degrees of splendor in this state of glory. Regenerate nature bears the image of God, aspires after union with God, is fitted to find its beatitude in the vision of God, is made apt and worthy to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. It demands, therefore, as its last complement, the lumen gloriae which enables it to see God face to face. The personal love of the soul to God as its friend and Father, and the personal love of God to the soul as his friend and son, require that they should have mutual vision of each other and live together. This living with God is eternal life, which is, therefore, the only fitting recompense for the love of God exercised by the just man upon earth.

Theologians do not, however, regard the title in strict justice to a supernatural reward, or the ratio of condign merit, as consisting solely in the condignity of the meritorious works themselves. They place it partially in the promise of God, or the decree of his providence which he has promulgated, in which special rewards are assigned as the recompense of good works performed in the state of grace. Therefore, they say, the reward of eternal life is due in strict justice, not by an obligation arising per se from the act of the creature, but by an obligation of the Creator to himself to fulfil his own word. They say that God may require, by virtue of his sovereign dominion, any amount of service from the creature as his simple due, without giving him any reward for it; that he may even annihilate him if he pleases, and, moreover, that the holy acts of the blessed in heaven, although they have a perfect condignity with supernatural rewards, do not receive any. Therefore, they say, a creature cannot merit a reward from God according to rigorous justice, but only according to a rule of justice derived from the free determination and promise of God. Scotus and some others even hold that the condignity of meritorious works with the promised reward is altogether extrinsic, and denotes merely that they are conformed to the standard or rule which is laid down by the divine law. It is, therefore, only required in strictness by the definition of the church, that one should confess that the good works of the just man entitle him to a supernatural reward by virtue of a promise which God has given. Those who are so extremely frightened at the sound of the phrase, "merit of condignity," as applied to men, can adopt the opinion of Scotus if they please. For our own part, we prefer the other and more common doctrine of condignity which we have already explained. We do not apprehend any danger to the glory of the Almighty from the exaltation of his own works, or any diminution of the merits of Christ from the glorification of his saints. On the contrary, the power and glory of God are magnified the more, the more like to himself the creature is shown to be which he has created. "God is admirable in his saints;" and, the more excellent their works are, the greater is the praise and homage which accrues to him from these works which are offered up to him as acts of worship. The only error to be feared is the attributing of something to the creature which he derives from himself, as having self-existent, independent being. To attribute to angel or man as much good as is in a withered leaf, is equivalent to a total denial of God, if this good is not referred to God as first cause. But to attribute to created nature all possible good, even to the degree of hypostatic union with the divine nature, does not detract in the slightest degree from the truth that God alone is good in himself, if the good of the creature is referred to him as its source and author. No doubt all right to existence, to immortality, to felicity of any kind, is derived from God, and is originally a free gift to the creature from him. But the right is a real right, of which the creature has just possession when God has given it to him, one which may be an inalienable right in certain circumstances, that is, a right which God cannot, in consistency with his own attributes, withdraw. When God creates a rational nature, in which he has implanted the desire and expectation of immortal existence and felicity, he implicitly promises immortality and felicity. We do not like to hear it said that he can annihilate such a creature or withhold from it the felicity after which it naturally aspires, unless it be as a just punishment for sin. So, when God creates man anew in the supernatural order, by giving him the grace of regeneration, he gives him an implicit promise of eternal beatitude. It is very true that he can exact from him any amount of service he pleases, as a debt that is due to his sovereign majesty; yet he cannot justly withhold from him final beatitude, unless he forfeits it by his own fault. The special reward annexed to every good work is undoubtedly due only by virtue of the explicit promise which God has made, to reward every such good work by an increase of grace and glory. It is also true that God does confer some degrees of glory on the just out of pure liberality and beyond the degree of merit. Moreover, the period of merit is limited by the decree of God to this life, because it is fitting that the creature should increase and progress, during his probation, toward the full measure of his perfection, and should afterward remain in that perfection when he has arrived at his term. We think, therefore, that we have made it plain enough that good works have a merit of condignity in relation to eternal life, and nevertheless derive this merit from the promise and appointment of God, subject to such conditions as he has seen fit, in his sovereign wisdom and liberality, to establish.

The doctrine we have laid down detracts in no way from the merits of Christ. Christ alone has the principle of merit in his own person as an original source. He alone has merited of condignity grace to be bestowed on others. His merits alone are the cause of the remission of sins, and the bestowal of regenerating, sanctifying, saving grace. His merits merits of the saints as the head is superior to the inferior members of the body. His incarnation, life, and death are, in a word, the radical meritorious cause of human salvation from the beginning to the end; and, in their own proper sphere or order of causation, are entirely alone. Christ is the only mediator of redemption and salvation between God and man, in whom the Father is reconciling the world to himself. His acts alone are referable to no principle higher or more ultimate than his own personality. All merely human grace, sanctity, or merit is, therefore, to be referred to him as its chief author, and to merely human subjects only as recipients or secondary and concurrent causes. It is easy to understand, therefore, what is meant by presenting the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints before God as a motive for bestowing grace. The saints have not merited anything over and above that which Christ has merited, nor have they merited, by a merit of condignity, even the application of the merits of Christ to others. Through their personal merits, they have obtained a kind of right of friendship to ask in a specially efficacious manner for graces and favors to be conferred on those for whom they intercede. Their mediation and merits are, therefore, only efficacious by way of impetration and prayer, and not by virtue of a right which they have obtained by a title of justice. This is what is meant by merit of congruity, which denotes a certain fitness in a person to obtain from God the favors for which he asks. This merit of congruity is all that is ascribed to the Blessed Virgin or the saints, as a groundwork of their intervening power, by any Catholic theologian. It is the same in kind with that which the just on earth possess, by virtue of which they obtain, through their prayers, blessings and graces for other persons. It is easy to see, therefore, how completely the Catholic doctrine is misunderstood by those who imagine that it either places man in the room of Christ, as his own Saviour, or substitutes the mediation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints for the mediation of Christ.

Full Of Grace.

Flowers in the fields, and odors on the air,
The spring-time everywhere;
Music of singing birds and rippling rills,
Soft breezes from the hills;
So broke the sweetest season, long ago,
Far from this death-cold snow.
In that blest land which smiles to every eye,
Most favored from on high;
And in one town whose sheltering mountains stand
Broad breast-plates of the land;
So fair a spring-time sure was never seen,
Since Eden's walks were green.

A sudden glory flashed upon the air,
A face unearthly fair;
A beauty given but to those alone
The nearest to the throne;
The great archangels who upon their hair
The seven planets wear.
Lightly as diamonds—such the form that now,
With brilliant eyes and brow.
Paused by the humble dwellings of the poor.
Entered the humblest door,
Veiling his awful beauty, far too bright,
With wide wings, strong and white.

Within the dwelling where his flight was stayed
A kneeling woman prayed.
The angel bowed before that holy face,
And hailed her "Full of Grace."
No other title, not the kingly name
Which David's line can claim;
Not highest rank, though unto her was given
Queenship of earth and heaven;
Not as that one who gave life to the dead,
Bruising the serpent's head;
Not even as mother of the Sacrificed,
The world-redeeming Christ.

This thought might be a sermon, while yet we,
Heirs of eternity,
Walk this brief, sin-surrounded tract of life.
Wage this short, sharpest strife,
Which must be passed and won before the rest.
The triumph of the blessed.
And when the hour supreme of fate shall come,
And at our promised home
We wait in breathless and expectant dread
Between the quick and dead,
Then may the angel warders of the place
Welcome us, "Full of Grace."

Translated From L'Economiste Belge.

How Our History Will Be Told In The Year 3000.

In those days—our latest posterity loquitur—the people were not entirely freed from the savage instincts of their ancestors, the anthropophagi, those ferocious contemporaries of the deluge and such great inundations of the world. True, they did not still eat their enemies, nor break their skulls with clubs; they did not pierce their bodies with arrows of bone and flint; but they did the work more delicately, entirely according to the rules of art, with the precision of a surgeon who cuts off a limb, or the coolness of a butcher who bleeds a sheep. By dint of inventions, calculations, and trials of every kind, they fabricated, at last, most ingenious tools, very convenient and very simple, and which they handled with equal dexterity. They were not instruments of natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, or mathematics; our fathers possessed, it is true, objects of this kind, but they did not think it proper to put them in the hands of the people. Their thermometers, microscopes, telescopes, and electrical machines remained in the shade of libraries or the cabinets of the learned. The people were ignorant of their names and uses, while they well understood the management of the tools of which I speak. So you will suppose these were very useful articles, as they were so generally employed in every clime and nation, and their object to moralize and instruct mankind, as governments consented to their gratuitous distribution among their subjects—went farther, even, and imposed their use. But alas! no; they were only tools of death and carnage, worthy to figure among the arms and instruments of torture of preceding ages; for while some shot off bullets, others threw to enormous distances balls of brass and steel, that made holes in human walls, burnt up towns, and sunk ships.

The men of this time were called "civilized"! Strange to say, they had abolished torture, and wished to do away with the pain of death. The scaffold horrified them, and the sight of the gallows gave them a vertigo! They had journals and books filled with beautiful phrases in honor of peace and civilization. But they did not comprehend the sense of aphorisms which they repeated incessantly and inscribed everywhere, on the fronts of their temples, and the first page of their constitutions.

Their age to them was the age of light, and they seemed ready to burst with pride when they considered their enormous riches, the fame of their arts, and the extent of their sciences. And, in appearance, one might have believed them wise, and as good as the beings who inhabit the more favored planets of our solar system. They had noble aspirations and a generous ardor.

In the penumbra in which they were plunged, a confused mass of whirling and exasperated workers was alone distinguishable, hungry, indefatigable, running up and down, like busy ants seeking their subsistence. The ear heard only a deafening and monotonous noise, like the buzzing of a hive. But in spite of shocks and hurts, inevitable from such a clamorous multitude, order and harmony seemed about being established, when suddenly the same beings who until then had appeared so laborious and active, were seized with a sort of rage, and set violently upon each other. The red light of incendiarism and the thundering brightness of battle thus demonstrated to the astonished gaze of philanthropists and thinkers, that vices, sanguinary passions, and brutal instincts, always alive and always indomitable, were only hidden in shade, and awaiting the favorable moment to break their bonds and annihilate civilization. By the artificial and slightly tarnished light of their sciences, philosophers had gathered round them men of policy and amiability, civilized and peaceable, distinguished by good manners, and saying pretty things about fraternity and progress; but the light that broke upon them, the evidence that disenchanted them in this shock of nations, showed them only coarse and ignorant crowds, capable of committing, in their folly and cruelty, every crime and every infamy. They had believed that the type of their epoch was the man of business, industrial or negotiating, the sharp worker, armed for competition, and prepared for the incessant struggles of production; and behold! suddenly this personage quits the scene, transforming himself into a fantastical being, clothed in brilliant colors, his head ornamented with cock's feathers, his step stiffened, his manners brusque, and his voice short and sonorous. At the first boom of the cannon, the rolling of the drum, or the sound of a warlike march, millions of men, clothed in red, like the common hangman, marched out of the shade, furnished with instruments suitable for bleeding, scorching, disembowelling, crushing, burning, and stopping the breath of their neighbors. And perhaps you think these men were the refuse of society; that they came from low haunts and prisons; had neither heart nor intelligence; that they were given up to public execration. You never were more mistaken. Each one of these auxiliaries of death was considered healthy in mind and body, vigorous and intelligent, honest and disciplined. To exercise his trade suitably, he was obliged to possess a crowd of precious qualities, know perfectly how to behave himself, be honorable, and of unimpeachable integrity!

As to the great generals, they were wise men, and men of the world. They were expected to study mathematics, as it specially teaches order and harmony; history, which proves that violence and force have never established anything; and many other sciences, which one would have imagined capable of directing their thoughts from their impious career, and rendering them pacific and humane.

Toward 1866 a great invention agitated the world. You are ready to believe it was some means of aerial locomotion, or some process for utilizing central heat, or placing our planet in communication with the neighboring ones of Mars and Venus. Alas! no. Such discoveries were not yet ripe; and besides, men of this age had other preoccupations. A small province of the north of Germany, with an erudite and philosophical people, had the honor of giving to the world the celebrated needle-gun. Tired of thinking, they relinquished their ideal, to move heavily and noisily under the sun of reality, and set about acting; but instead of inventing a philosophy, they considered a new engine of destruction more creditable, and having tried it with the most magnificent results, they offered to the public the instrument which was entirely to change the map of Europe, break the equilibrium of power, and annihilate all international right. After having laid low several millions of men on the field of battle, this comparatively insignificant people on the borders of the Spree, who until then had won more academical laurels than cannons, and more truths than promises, began to comprehend that they could play a splendid rôle, and exercise a preponderating influence in Europe. Formerly they had invented an absolute philosophy; now they invented and practised an absolute policy. And this was the union of the German people, the triumph of Prussian institutions, the decay of the Latin and rise of the Germanic races, and many other changes which only absolute power can effect. These little people on the borders of the Spree awoke to a new life, and determined to take all and absorb all; they threatened Holland; coveted Alsace; were disposed to swallow up Bavaria, the grand-duchy of Baden, and Würtemberg. Other nations were troubled, and justly; for the power of the Germans seemed to them very much like absolutism. So each of them, in great haste, began to perfect their own instruments of death with the faint hope, too, that they might very soon make use of them. Old France, tired of conquests and interior struggles, wished only to rest. Having disturbed the tranquillity of Europe so often, she had come to that age when repose is the chief good; so she feigned ignorance of the insolent aspect and gestures of defiance of her young rival; but unhappily a few judicious men, and many more of an intriguing nature, fools and ambitious ones, were at the head of affairs. These loved war as a golden egg, and birds of prey, we know, derive their sustenance from a field of battle. Some already dreamed of wading through blood to conquer an epaulette, others that they gained millions in supplies, and became great dignitaries in the empire. So they went about repeating that their country was degraded, reduced to a second rank; that Germanic insolence must be chastised, and the glorious tricolor planted on the left shore of the Rhine. The journals commented on their words, and the rustic in his hut, the laborer at his forge, and the financier in his counting-house dreamed with terror of the dawning evil. Certain politicians, meditating on the situation and the march of events, declared war inevitable, necessary, providential, and alone able to reëstablish the influence of the country and the prestige of the government. So they burst out in eloquent discourses in favor of military armaments, while on their side strategists, inventors, and administrators set to work, believing they were the foundation of the future prosperity of their country.

Their theory was very simple. The power of a nation, they said, depended on the number of men capable of bearing arms, and on the quantity and quality of the engines of destruction that they possessed. That is, our country must be powerful in order to be rich, prosperous, and free. Ergo, let us increase to every extent the effectiveness of our troops and fabricate without parsimony such arms as are unparalleled in Europe. Weak patriots and economists, the Sancho Panzas of these Don Quizotte politics, murmured a little, but they found themselves obliged to be silent and bow their heads under the taunts and reproaches with which they were loaded. "Utopists," cried the inventors, "you say our machines are not useful; but look down there in the direction of Sadowa and Custozza, and tell us afterward if we have not rapidly and economically fabricated smoke and glory. Ask the surgeons, and they will describe to you the gaping wounds, the deep rents they can produce; [Footnote 42] ask statesmen, and they will tell you the services they render to the ambitious, and the good livings they secure thereby." "Miserable citizens! men without energy and honor," cry they to others, "you lazily prefer well-being to glory, and the success of your personal enterprises to that of the national glory; but let the hour of danger come, and we will make you walk at the point of the bayonet, notwithstanding your cries and menaces." ... And people who cared nothing for truth, and judged by appearances, echoed the cry, and called them utopists, hollow dreamers, theorists, and, after all, cowardly and egotistical.

[Footnote 42: At Strasbourg the effects of the Chassepot gun have just been certified by experiments on a corpse hung at a distance of fifteen yards. The experiments were made by M. Sarazin, and corroborated by the medical faculty. We will hear the good doctor in his own words: "I am far from exaggerating," said he modestly, "the practical value of my experiences, and I well know the desiderata, easier to distinguish than resolve, that they present from the point of view in which the effect of the Chassepot gun is produced according to distance and on the living being. However, everywhere I have drawn the following conclusions:

"At a short distance, and on a corpse the projectiles have not deviated in their course.

"1. The diameter of the orifice, as it enters, is the same as that of the projectile.

"2. The diameter of the orifice, as it goes out, is enormous, seven to thirteen times larger than that of the ball.

"3. The arteries and veins are cut transversely, drawn back and gaping. The muscles are torn and reduced to the consistency of pulp.

"4. The bones are shattered to a considerable extent, and out of all proportion to the shock of the projectile.

"To sum up, the effects present a remarkable intensity, and it is well to note that, after having traversed the corpse, the projectile pierced two planks, each an inch thick, and buried itself deeply in the wall."]

So soon as such a river of ink flowed from the desks of the journalists, dragging in its course these insults and injuries, the workmen commenced their labors. They made rifled cannon of steel; hammered coats of mail for their men-of-war; pointed their sword-blades with steel and iron; made bullets, balls, bombs, and howitzers, heaped up in their arsenals great quantities of powder. And one bright day the government announced with pride to the country that it owned 9173 brass cannons, 2774 howitzer cannons, of the same material, 3210 bronze mortars, 3924 small bronze howitzers, 1615 cast-iron cannons, 1220 howitzers, 20,000 carriages for ordnance, 10,000 covered wagons, 4,933,688 filled cannon-balls, 3,630,738 howitzer-balls, 18,778,549 iron bullets, 351,107,574 ball-cartouches, 1,712,693 percussion guns, 817,413 guns of flint, 10,263,986 pounds of powder—in short, enough to exterminate the entire globe. Admirable litany, which the good citizens were to recite mentally every time they thought of the future of their country! Yet profound politicians said it was not enough, and the great statesmen were not at all satisfied. "We must have," said they, "some terrible invention that will strike our enemies with terror. We would like a machine that would mow them down like the scythe of the reaper in the harvest, with movement so regular and continued that it would be impossible for one to escape."

They did speak of a new apparatus, ornamented by its inventor with the pretty name of the grape-gun, and which could send off, twice a minute, a shower of fifty balls. But public opinion demanded something better, and the mortified death-seekers recommenced their labors.

In those days philanthropists and politicians tried to think of the best means of establishing peace an Europe. So they met in a town of Switzerland, on the borders of a beautiful lake, and in presence of grand and lovely scenery—a place which ought to have inspired them with high and holy resolutions. But, unfortunately, they brought with them the bellicose thoughts of their own countries; and so they concluded the only way to promote peace was to destroy all bad and weak governments, abolish abuses, upset society, and so unite all peoples. One might have suggested that a state of peace could alone have produced such harmony; but they did not so closely consider the question.

They were so-called democrats, and they sincerely believed the aurora of justice would shine in the future on the field of battle, and brighten the smoking ruins of its former society. ...

But let us pardon our ancestors: they were more ignorant than wicked. Peace to their ashes! which, mingling now with the elements, circulate in the universe.

Since their time, the globe has many times recommenced its eternal evolutions; the sun has gone out of its orbit, and carried with it the planets into the depths of space; science has become the principal work of human existence, and order is established everywhere; and we, the latest comers on the earth, live happily, because we are free—free, because we are united—united, because we are members of the same family, and children of the same God.

Plan For A Country Church.

At the request of several bishops and clergymen, we intend to publish from time to time in this magazine, architectural plans suitable for churches of moderate size and costliness. There are many churches of this kind, especially in small country places, required by the wants of the people, where an architect cannot be found, and where the materials, furniture, and other necessary parts or appendages of the sacred edifice must be of the cheapest possible kind. Generally speaking, churches of this sort are built and furnished without any regard to beauty or rubrical propriety. It is, however, just as cheap and easy to make them attractive, neat, and strictly ecclesiastical in their style and proportions as the contrary, if only proper plans and directions can be obtained. These we purpose to furnish after various styles of architecture, and suitable to the different exigencies and tastes of different places and persons. In so doing, we hope to supply a want that has long been felt, and to assist a great number of priests who are laboriously engaged in the meritorious but difficult task of building churches with but limited means for carrying out their plans.

Description.

The design which we have engraved in this number will give accommodation to two hundred and fifty persons seated, the area of the floor of the church being 41 x 25 feet in the clear, with a sanctuary of 12 x 16 feet, a sacristy 12 x 15 feet, and a porch to the front of the church sheltering the door against exposure. The confessional is placed in such a position that the comfort of the priest as well as the convenience of the people may be secured.

The church should be framed with good, stout sills 8x12 inch section, resting on a substantial wall of rubble masonry, where stone can be obtained, or of brick where this material becomes necessary, which wall should be carried deep enough to be unaffected by the frosts of winter, and raised one foot at least above the earth, a wall of rubble or brick being built along the centre to bear the joists of the floor. The joists should be (3 x 10) framed into the sills so that the top of the floor, when finished, may be twenty-eight inches, above the earth, giving four steps to the church, the floor of the sanctuary and sacristy being one step higher, and both on a level. The corner-posts should be 8 X 8 pine timber, and four intermediate posts of 4 x 8. under each principal of the roof. The plate on the top should be 4 x 8, and carried round the whole building except where the chancel intervenes, and care should be taken that all the scarfs of this piece of timber should be carefully made. The posts should all be braced with 4x6 pieces, and the walls studded with 4x4, so that, should it be deemed necessary, in particular localities, to render the building less susceptible to the changes of temperature, the inner space may be filled.

The roof should be framed as high as shown on the elevation, with a slope of 60° with the horizon, in order to obtain greater height to the interior and greater strength to the truss, with a collar about midway of the height, but not lower, and curved braces, resting on hammer beams projecting from the side-walls at the height of the plate, and a curved brace underneath this beam, bringing the strain of the truss as low as possible on the side-walls, but not incommoding the congregation.

Elevation

Floor plan of church building.

This simple roof should be framed of the best seasoned timber, 4x6 inches scantling, and should be dressed neatly, and, wherever desired, may be moulded and have chamfered edges, and the spandrels filled with two-inch tracery.

In the sanctuary should this more especially be done to mark the distinction of this part of the church. The principals of the roof should be 10 ft. 3 in. apart from the centres, with rafters of 2 x 8 laid across the same 2 ft. 6 in. apart, and the plank covering to be laid neatly with narrow tongued and grooved boards where it may not be desired to plaster the under side of the rafters; in case it may be thought advisable to plaster the ceiling, the plaster should be colored a light blue. The chancel arch should be struck with a curve from the same centre as the roof-braces, with the edges of the jambs and soffit chamfered and moulded.

The walls plastered up to the plate and floated with two coats and finished a light, pleasing, and warm color. If means sufficient warranted, a good cornice neatly moulded should finish the side-walls and break against the principals of the roof, and may be of wood or run in plaster.

A label moulding should be run around each door and window, and in the sanctuary should be enriched whenever possible.

The window over the altar should be two lights wide or more, filled with good geometrical tracery, like that in the front of the pattern shown, the side-windows having pointed heads to the frames and sashes enclosed in segmental heads on the inside. All the windows should be glazed with plain diamond quarry glass of a warm color, and where it may be possible, the chancel window should have enriched borders and the tracery filled with appropriate symbols.

The front of the chapel has been shown covered with shingles, the timbers showing the framing prominently, and should be dressed and the angles chamfered in the manner indicated; the corner-post that carries the bell-cot should be made in one length, and the bell-cot sheltered by a roof of considerable projection and surmounted by a cross, which feature may not inappropriately be transferred to the gable of the chapel at the option of the priest. In structures like the one presented, it is a simpler and at the same time better arrangement to allow the eaves of the roof to project and to dispense with the gutter, the earth below being protected by flagging, or a properly graded gravelled slope. The chimney shown on the plan should be placed in the position marked, to render the draught more equable; in general, all other details of the church, such as pews, and a gallery if needed, and the doors, must be made to accord with the style of the building, and the painting should be the natural color of the wood, stained, unless it be sought to grain the roof or color in bright colors.

In presenting these directions for the builder, many details and features are omitted which can only be supplied by specifications.

This building can be executed for the sum of $3150, the work being plain but substantial, in accordance with the description.

Miscellany.

We learn with much regret that on the 12th of February the printing establishment of the Abbé Migne, at Mont Rouge, in the southern suburb of Paris, was totally destroyed by fire. No particulars of the occurrence have yet been given. The enterprise, conducted with extraordinary vigor and ability by the abbé, was unique in the history of publishing. It was founded for the purpose of supplying books for the Catholic clergy of France and the whole world. Nearly two thousand volumes, in large imperial octavo, comprising the whole of the Greek and Latin fathers of the church, and writers on theology and ecclesiastical history, were edited, published, and kept constantly in print, employing a staff of several hundred persons, including literary men, printers, binders, etc.—London Publishers' Circular.

Amaurosis from Tobacco-Smoking.—Mr. Hutchinson has reported thirty-seven cases of amaurosis, of which he says thirty-one were among tobacco-smokers. Mr. Hutchinson concludes:

1. Amongst men, this peculiar form of amaurosis (primary white atrophy of the optic nerve) is rarely met, except among smokers.

2. Most of its subjects have been heavy smokers—half an ounce to an ounce a day.

3. It is not associated with any other + affection of the nervous system.

4. Amongst the measures of treatment, the prohibition of tobacco ranks first in importance.

5. The circumstantial evidence tending to connect the affection with the habit of tobacco-smoking is sufficient to warrant further inquiry into the matter on the part of the profession.—Popular Science Review.

The New Laboratory at the Sorbonne.—This magnificent establishment, which is to be devoted to the pursuit of chemical investigation, seems to provide for the student's wants on even a more liberal scale than its celebrated rival at Berlin. Besides the various rooms for researches in chemistry, pur et simple, there are numberless apartments exclusively intended for investigation in optics, electricity, mechanics, and so forth. Motive-power is provided for by a steam-engine of great force, which is connected by means of bands with wheels in the several laboratories. Again, besides the ordinary pipes carrying coal-gas, there will be a series of pipes supplying oxygen from retorts kept constantly at work. Indeed, altogether the new laboratory will be a species of Elysium for the chemical investigator.

The Bessemer Steel Spectrum.—Father Secchi, who lately presented to the French Academy his fine memoir on the Stellar Spectra, compared the spectra of certain yellow stars with the spectrum produced in the Bessemer "converter" at a certain stage of the process of manufacture. The employment of the spectroscope in the preparation of this steel was begun a couple of years since; but the comparison of the Bessemer spectrum with the spectrum of the fixed stars has not, so far as we can remember, been made before. The Bessemer spectrum is best seen when the iron is completely decarbonized; it contains a great number of very fine lines, and approaches closely to the spectrum of a Ononis and a Herculis. The resemblance, no doubt, is due to the fact that the Bessemer flame proceeds from a great number of burning metals. The greatest importance attaches to the analogy pointed out by Father Secchi. Father Secchi suggests that beginners could not do better than practise on the Bessemer flame before turning the spectroscope on the stars. Difficult an instrument to conduct investigations with as the spectroscope undoubtedly is, the difficulty almost becomes perplexity when the student tries to examine stellar spectra.

New Publications.

Count Lucanor; or, The Fifty Pleasant Stories of Patronio. Written by the Prince Don Juan, A.D. 1335-1347. First done into English, from the Spanish, by James York, Doctor of Medicine, 1868: Basil Montague Pickering, Piccadilly, in the City of Westminster. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau Street, New-York.

Mr. Pickering seems to revel in literary oddities. His book on the Pilgrim's Progress was quaint enough, and this volume is scarcely behind it in any of its queer qualities. A more totally foreign book we do not remember ever seeing. In style, idiom, turn of thought, everything, it is remote, toto caelo, from all the ideas and criteria of English and modern criticism. Its publication strikes us as being a remarkably bold stroke; we cannot imagine for what class of readers it could have been intended. The only market we could conceive of for such a work in this country, would be a class of Mr. George Ticknor's, if he were to have one, in Spanish archaeology. In Spanish, and as Spanish, we should think it would prove most interesting; even though the translation is intensely Iberian, both in structure and thought.

The "Fifty Pleasant Stories" are very simple as to the machinery, so to speak, of the telling of them. "Count Lucanor" throughout the book asks advice of his friend Patronio, stating his case, and being responded to with a story. Who Count Lucanor may have been is a mystery for ever. The book shows him to posterity only as a Spanish gentleman of apparent consequence, whose forte, as poor Artemus Ward would say, seems to have been to fall into difficulties and ask advice of Patronio. This gentleman appears as a sort of Don Abraham Lincoln, or Señor Tom Corwin, rather. Every question instantly and irresistibly reminds him of "a little story, you know," etc., etc. This is all of their history. What the end of a man must have been who answered every question with an anecdote, we can only shudderingly decline to conjecture. Whether the gallant Count Lucanor sportively ran him through the body after one story too many some roystering day; whether he went mad when the stories gave out, or whether death interrupted him in a sage narrative, with his sapient hand button-holing the count's doublet, it is not said.

There is a world of dry, old-world, dusty, aged pithiness about the stories. They are generally very fairly to the point, and often full of the peculiar patness so characteristic of Sancho Panza. The most remarkable thing about the book, though, is the really large number of apparent originals it contains. In it are gems of all manner of precepts and principles that others have amplified into poetry, and tragedy, and novels, and almost everything. Still, we cannot call this more than a seeming originality, because directly alongside of a tale we are surprised to trace in Shakespeare, or La Fontaine, (a principal debtor to Count Lucanor,) or some other admired author, we are as likely to find some story so aged, so thread-bare, so worn and torn and sapless with the use of centuries, that one is tempted to refer it back to the year 1. Several of the tales are taken from the Arabian Nights, and Don Juan Manuel generally modernized them (?) to suit the enlightened Castilian and anti-Moorish tastes of A.D. 1335, The old, old story of Alnaschar, for instance, is dished up as "What happened to a Woman called Pruhana," and the note to the story quietly goes on to the original original, (skipping old Alnaschar with a word as a mere junior copy,) namely, "the fifth part of the Pantcha Pantra," which, all will be charmed to learn, is entitled "Aparickchita Kariteva," which latter an Irish friend translates, "Much good may it do ye," and our annotator "Inconsiderate Conduct." We will not quote the intensely thrilling narrative of this Hindoo classic, but content ourselves with assuring our readers, on our honor as a Brahmin, that the point is identically the same.

One of the best examples of the characteristic aptness of the book is Chapter vii.—"The Invisible Cloth." Count Lucanor's quandary is all of a man who offered the count great advantages if he would trust absolutely in him and in no one else. Three impostors (we condense the good Patronio mercilessly) come to a king as weavers of a peculiar cloth that no man but a legitimate son of his father could see; to any one with even a secret taint upon his authenticity it was utterly invisible. The king, delighted with this test of so interesting and gossipable a matter, shuts them up in his palace to make the cloth, furnishing them rich raw material of all sorts. After some days the king is invited alone to see the wonderful woof. King-like, the king sends his chamberlain first. The chamberlain, trembling for his pedigree, opens his mind's eye, sees the cloth distinctly, and returns full of its praises. The king goes next, can't see it either, is terrified for his title to his throne, and decides to see it also; does see it, and admires it extravagantly. Finding it still rather puzzling, he sends his Superintendent Kennedy (alguacil) to work up the case. This functionary, likewise failing to see it, and fearing supersedure by the senior inspector of police, makes up his mind that the king's eyes are good enough for him, and, through them, sees it too. Next a councillor goes to report, and, like a true councilman as he is, honors his father and mother by seeing it in the same light as the powers that be. Finally, for some one of the three hundred and sixty-five extraordinary feast-days of Spain, the king orders a suit of the invisible cloth, doesn't dare not to see it, and rides forth among his leal subjects in a costume strikingly like that famous fatigue uniform of the Georgia cavalry, that we used to hear so much of during the war. His people generally, out of respect to their parents, submit to the optical illusion, till, finally, a Spanish citizen of African descent, "having (says Patronio—not we) nothing to lose, came to him and said: 'Sire, to me it matters not whose son I am; therefore, I tell you that you are riding without any clothes.'" The result is a general opening of eyes, a sudden change of tailors, it is hoped, by the king, and the disappearance of the weavers with the rich raw material. Moral (slightly condensed from one page of Patronio)—"Don't Trust."

"James York, Doctor of Medicine," has wasted valuable medical time in translating this, with a good deal of fidelity to the spirit of the Spanish. His style really does render much of its quaintness; as much, perhaps, as today's English will hold in solution. He is also very fairly fortunate with certain small mottoes, or couplets, which close each story, prefaced thus, with slight variations: "And Don Juan, (another utterly mystical character, who does nothing but what follows,) also seeing that it was a good example, wrote it in this book, and made these lines, which say as follows:

'Who counsels thee to secrecy with friends,
Seeks to entrap thee for his own base ends.'"
(Chapter vii., above given.)'

The notes appended to each story are as odd, many of them, as the stories. Generally, they are little more than notes of admiration, but often brief excursuses, showing quite a varied range of reading, and full of all manner of reconditeness. These would seem to be mainly Mr. York's, and they do him credit in spite of their ludicrously high praise now and then.

In the mechanical execution of the volume, Mr. Pickering, we observe, cleaves to his chosen model, the Aldine press, and so gives us in great perfection that accurate and studious-looking print which we all feel we ought to like, and which none of us do like. For our own part, we frankly own our preference for the short s, and all the modern improvements. Still, one must bear in mind a thing very obvious in all this line of publications, that it is expressly to meet and foster a kind of taste almost unknown in this country, and that the publisher is evidently carrying out with consistency and energy a peculiar policy of his own, whose success must at last be the test of its own merit.

The general American reader will find this a thoroughly curious book; the lover of cheap learning, a perfect treasure-house of rather uncommon commonplaces; and the Spanish scholar, "a genuine, if rugged, piece of ore from that rich mine of early Spanish literature which yet lies hidden and unwrought."

Peter Claver: A Sketch of his Life and Labors in behalf of the African Slave. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.

This little book is a brief compendium of the life of a great saint, who was the apostle of the negro slaves in South America. Its publication is very timely, as it shows to the philanthropists of New-England and of the country at large, who interest themselves so much in behalf of the African race, what Catholic charity has done and can do in their behalf. We recommend it to their attention. The Catholic religion, and it alone, can really and completely meet the wants of this much-to-be-compassionated portion of mankind. The striking vignette of this little volume, representing St. Peter Claver supporting the head of a dying negro, who holds a crucifix clasped to his dusky bosom, is an expressive emblem of this truth. It would be an excellent thing if our philanthropists, in Congress and out of Congress, would get a copy of this very suggestive photograph framed and hung up in some place where they are accustomed to say their prayers.

The Book of Moses; or, The Pentateuch in its Authorship, Credibility, AND Civilization.
By the Rev. W. Smith, Ph.D.
Volume I. London: Longman, Green & Co. 1868.
For sale at the Catholic Publication House, New York.

Dr. Smith has given us in this volume the first instalment of an extensive work on the Pentateuch. The authorship alone is treated of in this portion of the work. Dr. Smith happily combines orthodoxy of doctrine with a scientific spirit. He has evidently studied Egyptology, geology, comparative philology, and other sciences bearing on sacred science. He has also made himself familiar with Jewish and Protestant, as well as Catholic commentators. From a cursory examination, we are inclined to judge that his great and useful task has been thus far very well and thoroughly performed, and to expect that it will be completed in a satisfactory manner. The volume is brought out in the best style of English typographical art, with fac-similes of ancient pictures and inscriptions, which add much to its value. We recommend it to all students of the Holy Scriptures as one of the most valuable aids to their researches which has yet been published in the English language.

Life of St. Catharine of Sienna.
By Doctor Caterinus Senensis.
Translated by the Rev. John Fen, in 1609, and Reëdited, with a Preface, by Very Rev. Father Aylward.
New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1868.

This biography is a charming one, translated in the inimitable English idiom of the 17th century. Father Aylward has very successfully imitated the antiquated style in his valuable preface. The biography leaves nothing to be desired as a history of the private, interior life of the saint, though her wonderful public career is but slightly touched upon. The sketch of it in Father Aylward's preface induces us to wish that he would add to the history of Saint Catharine's private life by Caterinus, an equally complete history of her public life, with translations of her letters, from his own graceful and devout pen, which would furnish the English public with one of the best and most valuable biographies of a truly great and heroic woman to be found in any language.

Prayer the Key of Salvation.
By Michael Müller, C.S.S.R.
Baltimore: Kelly & Piet. 1868.

This book is an expansion of the excellent work of St. Alphonsus Liguori on Prayer. The object of it seems to be, to explain the saint's doctrine and illustrate it by examples, so as to bring it more within the comprehension of the mass of the people. But we are sorry to be obliged to say that the execution of the work does not come up to the idea. Without commenting on the matter, which is, in general, very good, we are compelled to say that the style is faulty in the extreme; the sentences are mostly un-English in their construction, and sometimes so long and involved that they are hard to understand. It also abounds in grammatical errors. In short, it is a pity it was not first thoroughly overlooked and revised by a competent hand before being allowed to go to press. However much we may desire to commend this book, we cannot in conscience do so, so long as it continues in its present dress.

La Reforme en Italie, les Precurseurs:
Discours Historiques de César Cantu.
Traduits de l'Italien par Aniset Digard et Edmond Martin.
Paris: Adrien le Clere, 29 Rue Cassette. 1867.

Caesar Cantu is the author of the best universal history extant, and of other historical works of the first class. He has undertaken the task of crushing the destructive pseudo-reformers of Italy under the weight of his massive historical erudition. The first volume of the present work, which is the only one yet published, brings down the subject to the 16th century, and will be followed by three others. The author is a sound and orthodox Catholic, yet, as a layman and as a historian, his work has not the distinctively professional style and spirit which are usually found in the works of ecclesiastical authors. He is fearless and free in speaking the historical truth, even when it is discreditable to ecclesiastical rulers and requires the exposure of scandals and abuses in the church. His spirit is calm and impartial, and the theological and ascetical elements are carefully eliminated. He has gone back to the very origin of Christianity, in order to trace the course of events from their beginning, and has traced the outlines of the constitution of historical Christianity. Church principles and dogmas are, however, exhibited in a purely historical method, and as essential portions of the history of facts and events. Such a writer is terrible to parties whose opinions and schemes cannot bear the light of history. The whole class of pseudo-reformers, whether semi-Christian or openly infidel, are of this sort. Cantu sweeps them off the track of history by the force and weight of his erudition, as a locomotive tosses the stray cows on the track of a railway, with broken legs, to linger and die in the meadows at each side of it. It is only Catholic truth, either in the supernatural or the natural order, which can bear investigation, or survive the crucial test of history. The so-called Reformation retains its hold on the respect of the world only through ignorance. When history is better and more generally known, it will be universally admitted that it was not only a great crime, but a great blunder, a faux pas in human progress.

The Infant Bridal, and other Poems.
By Aubrey De Vere. London: MacMillan & Co.

We are glad to see this book, rather for the memories than the novelties it brings us. Almost all its contents have been published in the author's other volumes, and there is nothing in this to alter the opinions, either good or ill, that we took occasion to express in a former review of them at large. The most remarkable about the book is the selection of the republished pieces. It only verifies anew the observation that authors, no more than we of the world, have the giftie to see themselves as others see them. Some of the best poems are there, and some of the worst. The Infant Bridal and The Search for Proserpine are perhaps the very two poorest of all the author's longer productions. Still, perhaps the many faults we fancy we see in the tact of the compilation, only come to this—that we ourselves would have compiled differently, and possibly worse.

But we meet, all over these elegant tinted pages, lines and beauties that we fondly remember loving of old—fine blank verse, wonderful descriptions, delicious idyls. These latter, by the way, are equally remarkable and unremarked. They are from the same fount with Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. We cannot resist giving one extract, from Glance, p. 64:

"Come forth, dear maid, the day is calm and cool,
And bright though sunless. Like a long green scarf,
The tall pines, crowning yon gray promontory,
In distant ether hang, and cut the sea.
But lovers better love the dell, for there
Each is the other's world. How indolently
The tops of those pale poplars, bending, sway
Over the violet-braided river brim!
Whence comes this motion? for no wind is heard,
And the long grasses move not, nor the reeds.
Here we will sit, and watch the rushes lean
Like locks, along the leaden-colored stream
Far off; and thou, O child, shall talk to me
Of Naiads and their loves."

One more sample of the contents of this volume, and we have said all there is to say. It is an unusual vein for De Vere, but one in which, like Tennyson, he engages never lightly and always with telling success. It is the close of A Farewell to Naples, p. 255:

"From her whom genius never yet inspired.
Or virtue raised, or pulse heroic fired;
From her who, in the grand historic page.
Maintains one barren blank from age to age;
From her, with insect life and insect buzz.
Who, evermore unresting, nothing does;
From her who, with the future and the past,
No commerce holds—no structure rears to last.
From streets where spies and jesters, side by side.
Range the rank markets and their gains divide;
Where faith in art, and art in sense is lost.
And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast;
Where passion, from affection's bond cut loose,
Revels in orgies of its own abuse;
And appetite, from passion's portals thrust.
Creeps on its belly to its grave in dust;
Where vice her mask disdains, where fraud is loud.
And naught but wisdom dumb, and justice cowed;
Lastly, from her who planted here unawed,
'Mid heaven-topped hills and waters bright and broad,
From these but nerves more swift to err has gained
And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned;
And, girt not less with ruin, lives to show
That worse than wasted weal is wasted woe—
We part; forth issuing through her closing gate.
With unreverting faces, not ingrate."

Cannot this book speak better for itself than our good word?

Folks and Fairies. Stories for little children.
By Lucy Randall Comfort.
With engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1868.

Judging, not, however, from perusal, but from hearsay, we think the pleasure of Mrs. Comfort's juvenile readers would be increased if she had given them more "Folks" and less "Fairies." On the same high authority we also protest against some of the engravings, for example, "Otho returning home," as illustrations of the text.

Books Received.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:

Mozart. A Biographical Romance.
From the German of Heribert Ran.
By E. R. Sill, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 323.
Easy French Reading: Being selections of historical tales and anecdotes, arranged with copious foot-notes, containing translations of the principal words, a progressive development of the form of the verb, designations of the use of prepositions and particles, and the idioms of the language. By Professor Edward T. Fisher. To which is appended a brief French grammar. By C. J. Delille. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232.

From Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:

A Catechism of the Vows.
For the use of persons consecrated to God in the religious state.
By the Rev. Father Peter Cotel, S.J.

From Samuel R. Wells, New York:

Oratory, Sacred and Secular: or, The Extemporaneous Speaker. With sketches of the most eminent speakers of all ages. By William Pittenger, author of Daring and Suffering. Introduction by Hon. John A. Bingham, and appendix containing a Chairman's Guide for conducting public meetings according to the best parliamentary models, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 220.

Life in the West; or, Stories of the Mississippi Valley. By N. C. Meeker, Agricultural Editor of the New York Tribune, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360.

From Lee & Shepard, Boston:

Red Cross; or, Young America in England and Wales.
A story of Travel and Adventure.
By Oliver Optic,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 336.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VII., No. 38.—May, 1868.

Tennyson In His Catholic Aspects.

For a poet eminently modern and English in his modes of thought, Tennyson is singularly free from the spirit of controversy. His native land is distracted by religious feuds, yet he who has been called "the recognized exponent of all the deeper thinkings of his age," takes no active part in them, and seldom drops a line that bespeaks the school of theology to which he belongs. At long intervals, indeed, devout breathings escape him. Once now and then he extracts a block of dogma from the deep quarry within, and fixes it in an abiding place. He never scatters doubts wantonly; he is always on the side of faith, though not perfect and Catholic faith. He alludes to Christian doctrines as postulates. For his purpose they need no proof. It would be idle to prove anything if they were not true. They are the life of the soul, and the vitality of verse.

"Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the press,"

he cries; but he adds this apostrophe likewise:

"Fly happy with the mission of the cross."

The Golden Year.

He looks for the resurrection of the body, and bids the dry dust of his friend (Spedding) "lie still, secure of change." (Lines to J. S.) When the spirit quits its earthly frame, he follows it straight into the unseen world and the presence of its Creator and God. He points to "the grand old gardener and his wife" in "yon blue heavens," smiling at the claims of long descent, (Lady Clara Vere de Vere;) and he speeds the soul of the expiring May Queen toward the blessed home of just souls and true, there to wait a little while for her mother and Effie:

"To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast—
Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

The May Queen.

Intensely as he loves nature, Tennyson is no Pantheist. Though like the wild Indian, he "sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind," he does not therefore confound matter with its Maker, nor lose sight of the personality of the Being whom he adores. He is no disciple of fate or chance, but recognizes in all human affairs the working of a divine and retributive providence, whose final judgment of good and evil is foreshadowed and begun during our mortal life. To His presence and promptitude in reply to prayer, he refers more than once in pathetic and pointed language. He tells us how Enoch Arden, when cast away on a desert island, heard in his dream "the pealing of his parish bells," and

"Though he knew not wherefore, started up
Shuddering, and when the beauteous, hateful isle
Returned upon him, had not his poor heart
Spoken with that, which, being everywhere.
Lets none who speak with Him seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude."

Enoch Arden.

It would not be difficult for those who are acquainted with Tennyson's earlier history, to discover the church of which he is a member, and the section of it whose views he adopts. In Memoriam takes us into the interior of his father's parsonage, to the Christmas hearth decorated with laurel, and the old pastimes in the hall; to the witch-elms and towering sycamore, whose shadows his Arthur had often found so fair; to the lawn where they read the Tuscan poets together; and the banquet in the neighboring summer woods. We almost hear the songs that then pealed from knoll to knoll, while the happy tenants of the presbytery lingered on the dry grass till bats went round in fragrant skies, and the white kine glimmered, couching at ease, and the trees laid their dark arms about the field. "The merry, merry bells of Yule," with their silver chime, are referred to more than once in Tennyson's poems. They seem to be ever ringing in his ears. They controlled him, he says, in his boyhood, and they bring him sorrow touched with joy.

It is in singing of Arthur Hallam that the poet's faith in the immortality of the soul is brought out with beautiful clearness. The bitterness of his grief draws him to the "comfort clasped in truth revealed," and he looks forward with hope to the day when he shall arrive at last at the blessed goal, and He who died in Holy Land shall reach out the shining hand to him and his lost friend, and take them "as a single soul." (In Memoriam, lxxxiii.)

From the verses addressed to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, (January, 1854.) we learn that one of Tennyson's children claims that gentleman as his godfather, and we gather from it and other poems, what all the Laureate's friends know, that his sympathies are with the Broad Church, of which Mr. Maurice, Kingsley, Temple, the Bishop of London, and Dr. Stanley are distinguished leaders. It is one of the peculiarities of this school to moderate the torments of the lost and to deny that they are eternal, to hope that good will in some way be the final goal of ill, and that every winter will at last change to spring. It cannot be disputed that this teaching is at variance with Catholic doctrine; but it is one which Tennyson puts forward with singular modesty, describing himself as

"An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry."

In Memoriam, liii.

The Broad Church, as its name implies, professes large and liberal views. Not wishing to be tried by too strict a standard itself, it repudiates all harsh judgments on others. Accordingly, we find in Tennyson few allusions to errors, real or supposed, in the creed of others. He regards as sacred whatever links the soul to a divine truth. He has many friends who are Catholics, and we have heard that he has expressed sincere anxiety to publish nothing relative to the Catholic religion calculated to give offence to its followers. There are few lines in his volumes which grate on the most pious ear, and no devout breathings in which we do not cordially join. It is in one of his earlier poems, and only in sport, that he makes the Talking Oak tell of—

"Old summers, when the monk was fat,
And, issuing shorn and sleek,
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
The girls upon the cheek,
Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's pence,
And numbered bead, and shrift.
Bluff Harry broke into the spence,
And turned the cowls adrift."

In conning his verse, therefore, the Catholic mind is at ease; it lights on no charges to be repelled, and (so far as we know, after long and close study of every line he has published) no mistakes regarding our faith which require to be rectified. There are those who imagine that in St. Simeon Stylites, he has wilfully misrepresented the character of a Catholic saint; but we venture to entertain a more lenient opinion, and shall endeavor presently to justify it. It is in a tone of irony, such as we must admire, that he describes the "heated pulpiteer in chapel, not preaching simple Christ to simple men," but fulminating "against the scarlet woman and her creed," and swinging his arms violently, as if he held the apocalyptic millstone, while he predicts the speedy casting of great Babylon into the sea. (Sea Dreams.) Nor are there wanting points of contact between Tennyson's ideas on religious matters and some of those dwelt on by Catholic divines. Thus he, like Dr. Newman, finds the arguments for the existence of God drawn from the power and wisdom discoverable in the works of nature, cold and inconclusive in comparison with that one which arises from the voice of conscience and the feelings of the heart. The cxxiiid section of In Memoriam runs singularly parallel with this beautiful passage in the Apologia, (p. 377:)

"Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist or a polytheist, when I looked into the world. ... I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society; but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice."

The arguments adduced by infidels, in support of their unbelief, have never been rebutted in verse more cleverly than by Tennyson. His blade flashes like lightning, and severs with as fine a stroke as Saladin's scimitar. The Two Voices may be cited in proof, and also the following passages in the matchless elegy on Arthur Hallam:

The Fates not blind, | (In Memoriam) iii.
Life shall live for evermore. | (In Memoriam) xxxiv.

If Death were death, love
would not be true love,

(In Memoriam) xxxv.

Individuality defies the tomb, | (In Memoriam) xlvi.
Immortality, | (In Memoriam) liv. lv.
Doubt issuing in belief. | (In Memoriam) xcv.
Knowledge without wisdom. | (In Memoriam) cxiii.
Progress, | (In Memoriam) cxvii.
We are not all matter. | (In Memoriam) cxix.
The course of human things, | (In Memoriam) cxxvii

These verses are no doubt the record of a mental conflict carried on during some years of the author's earlier life—a battle between materialism and spiritualism, between faith and unbelief, reason and sense. The Two Voices is philosophy singing, as In Memoriam is philosophy in tears. The English Cyclopaedia well calls the last poem "wonderful," and adds: "In no language, probably, is there another series of elegies so deep, so metaphysical, so imaginative, so musical, and showing such impassioned, abnormal, and solemnizing affection for the dead."

But it is now time to point to those passages in which Tennyson may be said to have, more particularly, Catholic aspects. Be they few or many, they are worth noticing, even though they prove nothing but that a Protestant poet of the highest order has such aspects, intense, striking, and lovely in no ordinary degree. Every true poet is in a certain sense a divine creation, and nothing but a celestial spark could ignite a Wordsworth, a Longfellow, or an Emerson. It has ever been the delight of the ancient church and her writers to discover portions of her truth among those who are separated from her visible pale. Far from grudging them these precious fragments, she only wishes they were less scanty, and would willingly add to them till they reached the full measure of the deposit of the faith. It would be easy to make out a complete cycle of her doctrine in faith and morals from the poems of Protestant and Mohammedan authors, but it would be only by combining extracts from many who, in matters of belief, differ widely from each other. In looking through the Laureate's volumes for traces of the church's teaching, we are in a special manner struck by his treatment of the invocation of the departed. With what deep feeling does he invite the friend, who is the subject of his immortal elegy, to be near him when his light is low, when pain is at its height, when life is fading away. (In Memoriam, xlix.) It reminds us of good Dr. Johnson's prayer for the "attention and ministration" of his lost wife, as Boswell has given it us. Can any Catholic express more fully than the Laureate the frame of mind becoming those who desire that the departed should still be near them at their side? (In Memoriam, 1.)

"How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold.
Should be the man whose thoughts would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.

"In vain shall thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.

"They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest.

"But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits.
They can but listen at the gates.
And hear the household jar within."

In Memoriam, xciii.

"If I can," says the dying May Queen in New Year's Eve—

"If I can, I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place;
Though you'll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your face;
Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what you say,
And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away."

It is not, therefore, in a vague and dreamy way, but with the full force of the understanding, that Tennyson invokes the spirits in their place of rest. It is not merely as a poet, but as a Christian, that he exclaims:

"Oh! therefore, from thy sightless range,
With gods in unconjectured bliss.
Oh from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold, complicated change,

"Descend, and touch, and enter: hear
The wish too strong for words to name;
That in the blindness of the frame
My ghost may feel that thine is near."
In Memoriam, xcii.

We say "as a Christian;" for we warmly repudiate the harsh interpretation which is often put on his words addressed to the Son of God:

"Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood thou."

"See," it is said, "this is the most you can get from your favorite about Christ—that he seems divine. It is an appearance, a semblance only." Now, this reasoning is most unfair. The remainder of the verse implies his godhead—

"Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine."

The verses which follow are a prayer to Christ, imploring from him light and aid, wisdom and forgiveness. (Prefatory lines to In Memoriam) In fact, it is evident from other parts of Tennyson's elegy, that he does not use the word seem in the sense of appearing to be what a thing is not, but in the sense of its appearing to be what it is. Thus, in the fifth stanza, below the lines just quoted, we have—

"Forgive what seemed my sin in me;
What seemed my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord! to thee."

So again, In Memoriam, xxxiii.,

"O thou that after toil and storm,
May'st seem to have reached a purer air;"

where "seem to have reached" is equivalent to "thou who hast reached," with that delicate shade of difference only which belongs to Greek rather than to English diction. Thus the verb [Greek text] is repeatedly used in the New Testament as an expletive, not meaningless to the ear, though adding no distinct idea which can be expressed in a single word, [Greek text], (St. Matt. iii. 9,) means to all intents, simply, "Say not in yourselves," and [Greek text] (Gal. ii. 9) means, "who were really the pillars they seemed to be." Such passages, it is true, prove nothing as to Tennyson's use of the word seem, but they do illustrate it. The perfect godhead of Christ is brought out fully in the sermon preached by Averill in Aylmer's Field. "The Lord from heaven, born of a village girl, carpenter's son," is there styled in the prophet's words, "Wonderful, Prince of Peace, the Mighty God."

When the Laureate prays that his very worth may be forgiven, he employs the language of deep humility which meets us so constantly in the writings of Catholic saints. It reminds us of their prayers to the Father of Lights that the best they have ever done may be pardoned, that their tears may be washed, their myrrh incensed, their spikenard's scent perfumed, and their breathings after God fumigated. It is no shallow view that he takes of repentance when he makes Queen Guinevere ask:

"What is true repentance but in thought—
Not e'en in inmost thought to think again
The sins that made the past so pleasant to us?"
Idylls of the King.

He has been accused of making St. Simeon Stylites a self-righteous saint. That he makes him ambitious of saintdom is true, but this hope which he "will not cease to grasp," is fostered by no sense of his own merits, but, on the contrary, springs from the deepest possible conviction of his unworthiness. He describes himself as

"The basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils mad with blasphemy."

He proclaims from his pillar, his "high nest of penance,"

"That Pontius and Iscariot by his side
Showed like fair seraphs."

He details, indeed, in language strikingly intense, his sufferings, prayers, and penances; but he disclaims all praise on account of them, and ascribes all his patience to the divine bounty. He does not breathe or "whisper any murmur of complaint," while he tells how his teeth

"Would chatter with the cold, and all his beard
Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon;"

how his "thighs were rotted with the dew;" and how

"For many weeks about his loins he wore
The rope that haled the buckets from the well.
Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;"

yet the climax of it all is, "Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin."

The Catholic aspects in St. Agnes' Eve and Sir Galahad, are no less marked than those of St. Simeon Stylites. As a devout breathing of a dying nun, the first of these poems is touching and exquisite. The snows lie deep on the convent-roof, and the shadows of its towers "slant down the snowy sward," while she prays and says:

"As these white robes are soiled and dark.
To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be."

All heaven bursts its "starry floors," the gates roll back, the heavenly Bridegroom waits to welcome and purify the sister's departing soul. The vision dilates. It is mysteriously vague—mysteriously distinct:

"The sabbaths of eternity.
One sabbath deep and wide—
A light upon the shining sea—
The Bridegroom with his bride!"

There is in such verse an indescribably Catholic tone. It is like the heavenly music of faith, which pervades the Paradise of Dante, and which (in spite of the lax lives of the authors) runs through the "Sacred Songs" of Moore, and the Epistle of Eloisa, and The Dying Christian's Address to his Soul, by Pope. But if Tennyson has proved equal to portraying a Catholic saint, he has also depicted most graphically a Catholic knight of romance. Sir Galahad, one of the ornaments of King Arthur's court, (Idylls of the King., p. 213,) whose

"strength is as the strength of ten,
Because his heart is pure,"

goes in quest of the Sangreal—the sacred wine. He hears the noise of hymns amid the dark stems of the forest, sees in vision the snowy altar-cloth with swinging censers and "silver vessels sparkling clean." He sails, in magic barks, on "lonely mountain meres," and catches glimpses of angels with folded feet "in stoles of white," bearing the holy grail.

"Ah! blessed vision! blood of God!
My spirit beats her mortal bars.
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And star-light mingles with the stars. ...
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange.
By bridge and ford, by park and pale.
All armed I ride, whate'er betide.
Until I find the holy grail."
Poems, p. 336.

A Catholic aspect may sometimes be observed in a single word. "And so thou lean on our fair father Christ," (Idylls, Guinevere, p. 254,) may perhaps sound strange to some ears, and is familiar to Catholics only. "He alone is our inward life," says Dr. Newman, speaking of Christ; "He not only regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) semper gignit; he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this sense he may be called, as in nature so in grace, our real Father." (Letter to Dr. Pusey, p. 89.) Hence, in the Litany of the Holy Name we say, "Jesu, Pater futuri seculi," and "Jesu, Pater pauperum."

The Catholic who well understands his own faith will always be very scrupulous about disturbing that of others. If there is anything abhorrent to him, "it is the scattering doubt and unsettling consciences without necessity." (Newman's Apologia, p. 344.) There is a well-known poem in In Memoriam, (xxxiii.,) which admirably illustrates this feeling. We quote but one verse, as the reader's memory will no doubt supply the rest.

"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious ways."

The theory and practice of the wisest Catholics conform to the spirit and letter of this injunction. Their devotional life, too, is perfectly reflected in Tennyson whenever he writes of prayer. There is a depth of feeling in his expressions on this subject which reaches to the fact that prayer is the truest religion—that it is the link which unites man more closely to his Creator than any outward acts, any meditations, any professed creed, and is the spring and current of religious life.

"Evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul"
Enoch Arden, p. 44.

"Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers.
Whose loves in higher love endure:
What souls possess themselves so pure?
Or is there blessedness like theirs?"
In Memoriam, xxxii.

Thus again, in the Morte d'Arthur, which was a forecast of The Idylls of the King, we are reminded of the efficacy of prayer in language worthy of being put into a Catholic's lips:

"Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats.
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

In the following lines, on the rarity of repentance, there is a reference to the coöperation of human will with divine grace, which equals the precision of a Catholic theologian:

"Full seldom does a man repent, or use
Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch
Of blood and custom wholly out of him.
And make all clean, and plant himself afresh."
Idylls of the King, p. 93.

In the same poem we find lines of a distinctly Catholic tone on the repentant queen's entering a convent, and on a knight who had long been the tenant of a hermitage. Guinevere speaks as follows:

"So let me, if you do not shudder at me,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun like you;
Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts;
Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys.
Bid not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines;
Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole
To poor sick people, richer in his eyes
Who ransomed us, and haler, too, than I;
And treat their loathsome hurts, and heal mine own;
And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the king."
Idylls of the King, p. 260.

The hermitage is thus described:

"There lived a knight
Not far from Camelot, now for forty years
A hermit, who had prayed, labored, and prayed.
And ever laboring had scooped himself
In the white rock a chapel and a hall
On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave.
And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry."
Idylls of the King, p. 168.

Among Tennyson's earlier poems, the picture of Isabel, "the perfect wife," with her "hate of gossip parlance, and of sway," her

"locks not wide dispread.
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity;"

and

"Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,"
Poems, pp. 7, 8,

is worthy of a Catholic matron. The description of St. Stephen, in The Two Voices, has all the depth and pathos of the poet's happiest mood; and, though neither it, nor some other passages which have been quoted, contain anything distinctively Catholic as opposed to other forms of Christianity, it is strongly marked with those orthodox instincts to which we are drawing attention:

"I cannot hide that some have striven,
Achieving calm, to whom was given
The joy that mixes man with heaven;
Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam.
And did not dream it was a dream;
But heard, by secret transport led,
E'en in the charnels of the dead,
The murmur of the fountain-head—
Which did accomplish their desire,
Bore and forbore, and did not tire;
Like Stephen, an unquenched fire,
He heeded not reviling tones.
Nor sold his heart to idle moans.
Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones;
But looking upward, full of grace.
He prayed, and from a happy place
God's glory smote him on the face."
Poems, p. 299.

We are anxious not to appear to lay undue stress on these extracts. Let them go for as much as they are worth, and no more. We do not stretch them on any Procrustean bed to the measure of orthodox. Others might be adduced, of a latitudinarian tendency, but they are few in number, and do not neutralize the force of these. In view of many passages in Shakespeare of a Catholic bearing, and of several facts favorable to the belief that he was a Catholic, M. Rio has come to the probably sound conclusion that he really was what he himself wishes to prove him. We put no such forced interpretation on our extracts from Tennyson as M. Rio has certainly put on many which he has brought forward from the Elizabethan poet; but we think that they are sufficiently cast in a Catholic mould to warrant us in applying to Tennyson the words which Carlyle has used in reference to his predecessor: "Catholicism, with and against feudalism, but not against nature and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of Shakespeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism." (French Revolution, vol. i. 10.)

But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place in Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great dramatist—a poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite themes, but love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly idealized. License finds in him no apologist, while he throws around purity and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid moralist can find nothing to censure in his treatment of the guilty love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid and Geraint, the meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited love of Elaine. If Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43] chosen King Arthur as the subject of his epic, he could not have taken a higher moral tone than Tennyson has in the Idylls of the King, and, considering how lax were his notions about marriage, it is probable he would have taken a lower one.

[Footnote 43: See his Mansas, and Life, by Toland, p. 17.]

King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is too long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally eloquent and edifying. (Idylls of the King.)

The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great name—not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and deeply to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of well-meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six slender volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has, till within the last few months, seldom contributed to periodicals, and when he has done so, the price paid for his stanzas seems fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by critics of a high order amounts, in many cases, to a passion and a worship. The specimen he has given of a translation of the Iliad promises for it, if completed, all that Longfellow has wrought for the Divina Commedia. The attempts he has made at Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics, and Galliambics in English have been thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an accomplished scholar. (Boädicea, etc., in Enoch Arden and other Poems.) As he does not write much, so neither does he write fast. The impetuous oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's verse is unknown to him. He never affects it. He reminds us rather of the operations of nature, who slowly and calmly, but without difficulty, produces her marvellous results. Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled, like the chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern floor a perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says the National Review, when speaking on this subject—"day by day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful forms, in stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets," writes the Edinburgh Review, "is that of sustained perfection. ... We look in vain among his modern rivals for any who can compete with him in the power of saying beautifully the thing he has to say."

O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44]

[Footnote 44: L Inferno, i. 82.]

During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds of some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many persons affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous Saxon, believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the writers and speakers who please us most are those whose style is most Saxon in its character. If Tennyson has modelled his verse after any author, it is undoubtedly Shakespeare, and the traces of this study may perhaps be found in his vocabulary. Yet no man is less of a plagiarist; not only his forms of thought but of language also are original, and though he owes much to the early dramatists, to Wordsworth and to Shelley, he fuses all metals in the alembic of his own mind, and turns them to gold. His love of nature is intense, and his observation of her works is microscopic. Yet he is never so occupied with details as to lose sight of broad outlines. In 1845, Wordsworth spoke of him as "decidedly the first of our living poets;" but since that time his fame has been steadily on the increase. Many of his lines have passed into proverbs, and a crowd of feebly fluttering imitators have vainly striven to rival him on the wing. What the people once called a weed has grown into a tall flower, wearing a crown of light, and flourishing far and wide. (The Flower. Enoch Arden, etc., p. 152.) A concordance to In Memoriam has been published, and the several editions of the Laureate's volumes have been collated as carefully as if they were works of antiquity. Every ardent lover of English poetry is familiar with Mariana, "in the lonely moated grange;" the good Haroun Alraschid among his obelisks and cedars; Oriana wailing amid the Norland whirlwinds; the Lady Shalott in her "four gray walls and four gray towers;" the proud Lady Clara Vere de Vere; the drowsy Lotos-Eaters; the chaste and benevolent Godiva; Maud in her garden of "woodbine spices;" the true love of the Lord of Burleigh, and the reward of honest Lady Clare. The highest praise of these ballads is that they have sunk into the nation's heart. They combine the chief excellences of other bards, and remind us of some delicious fruit which unites in itself a variety of the most exquisite flavors. This richness and sweetness may be ascribed in part to that remarkable condensation of thought which enriches one page of Tennyson with as many ideas and images as would, in most other poets, be found scattered over two or three pages. "We must not expect," wrote Shenstone in one of his essays, "to trace the flow of Waller, the landskip of Thomson, the fire of Dryden, the imagery of Shakespeare, the simplicity of Spenser, the courtliness of Prior, the humor of Swift, the wit of Cowley, the delicacy of Addison, the tenderness of Otway, and the invention, the spirit, and sublimity of Milton, joined in any single writer." Perhaps not. But Shenstone had never read Tennyson, and there is no knowing what he might have thought if he had conned the calm majesty of Ulysses; the classical beauty of Tithonus and the Princess; the luxuriant eloquence of Locksley Hall; the deep lyrical flow of The Letters and The Voyage; the 'cute drollery of the Northern Farmer; the idyllic sweetness of OEnone; the grandeur of Morte d'Arthur; the touching simplicity of Enoch Arden; the power and pathos of Aylmer's Field; the perfect minstrelsy of the Rivulet, and the songs, O Swallow, Swallow, and Tears, Idle Tears; and the sharps and trebles of the Brook, more musical than Mendelssohn.

Far be it from us to carp at any poetry because it proceeds from one who is not a Catholic. We believe, indeed, firmly that, if Tennyson had been imbued with the ancient faith, it would have cleared some vagueness both from his mind and his verse. But in these days, when Socinianism, positivism, and free-thinking in various shapes are taking such strong hold of educated men, we rejoice unfeignedly to find popular writings marked, even in an imperfect degree, with Christian doctrine and feeling. The influence exerted by the Laureate in the world of letters is great, and we have, therefore, endeavored at some length to show how far it is favorable, and how far unfavorable, to the cause of truth. Though unhappily not a Catholic, we recognize with delight the fact that he is not an infidel, and we feel persuaded that some at least of our readers will be pleased at our having placed in a prominent point of view the redeeming features in the religious character of his poetry.

Poland

When, fixed in righteous wrath, a nation's eye
Torments some crowned tormentor with just hate.
Nor threat nor flattery can that gaze abate;
Unshriven the unatoning years go by;
For as that starry archer in the sky
Unbends not his bright bow, though early and late
The syren sings, and folly weds with fate,
Even so that constellated destiny
Which keeps fire-vigil in a night-black heaven,
Upon the countenance of the doomed looks forth
Consentient with a nation's gaze on earth:
To the twinned powers a single gaze is given;
The earthly fate reveals the fate on high—
A brazen serpent raised, that says, not "live," but "die."

Aubrey de Vere.

Professor Draper's Books. [Footnote 45]

[Footnote 45: 1. Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical; or, Conditions and Course of the Life of Man. By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649.

2. History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 628

3. Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America. By the same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323.

4. History of the American Civil War. By the same. In three volumes. Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.]

Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly versed, in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe, a good chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in such matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and was, when first published, up to the level of the science to which it is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too much to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws; or rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even of animals, cannot be applied to man without many important reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he recognizes, in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle; but the recognition seems to be only a verbal concession, made to the prejudices of those who have some lingering belief in Christianity, for we find no use for it in his physiology. All the physiological phenomena he dwells on he explains without it, that is, as far as he explains them at all. Whatever his personal belief may be, his doctrine is as purely materialistic as is Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which explains all the phenomena of life by the mechanical, chemical, and electrical changes and combinations of matter.

It is due to Professor Draper to say, that in this respect he only sins in common with the great body of modern physiologists. Physiology—indeed, all the inductive sciences—have been for a long time cast in a materialistic mould, and men of firm faith, and sincere and ardent piety, are materialists, and, therefore, atheists, the moment they enter the field of physical science, and deny in their science what they resolutely affirm and would die for in their faith. Hence the quarrel between the theologians and the savans. The savans have not reconciled their so-called science with the great theological truths, whether of reason or revelation, which only the fool doubts, or in his heart denies. This proves that our physicists have made far less progress in the sciences than they are in the habit of boasting. That cannot be true in physiology which is false in theology; and a physiology that denies all reality but matter, or finds no place in it for God and the human soul, is no true physiological science. The physiologist has far less evidence of the existence of matter than I have of the existence of spirit; and it is only by spirit that the material is apprehensible, or can be shown to exist. Matter only mimics or imitates spirit. The continual changes that take place from time to time in physiology show—we say it with all deference to physiologists—that it has not risen as yet to the dignity of a science. It is of no use to speak of progress, for changes which transform the whole body of a pretended science are not progress. We may not have mastered all the facts of a science; we may be discovering new facts every day; but if we have, for instance, the true physiological science, the discovery of new facts may throw new light on the science—may enable us to see clearer its reach, and understand better its application, but cannot change or modify its principles. As long as your pretended science is liable to be changed in its principles, it is a theory, an hypothesis, not a science. Physiologists have accumulated a large stock of physiological facts, to which they are daily adding new facts. We willingly admit these facts are not useless, and the time spent in collecting them is not wasted; on the contrary, we hold them to be valuable, and appreciate very highly the labor, the patient research, and the nice observation that has collected, classified, and described them; but we dare assert, notwithstanding, that the science of physiology is yet to be created; and created it will not be till physiologists have learned and are able to set forth the dialectic relations of spirit and matter, soul and body, God and nature, free-will and necessity. Till then there may be known facts, but there will be no physiological science. As far as what is called the science of human life, or human physiology, goes, Professor Draper's work is an able and commendable work; but he must permit us to say that the real science of physiology he has not touched, has not dreamed of; nor have any of his brethren who see in the human soul only a useless appendage to the body. The soul is the forma corporis, its informing, its vital principle, and pervades, so to speak, and determines, or modifies, the whole life and action of the human body, from the first instant of conception to the very moment of death. The human body does not exist, even in its embryonic state, first as a vegetable, then as an animal, and afterward as united to an immaterial soul. It is body united to soul from the first instant of conception, and man lives, in any stage of his existence, but one and the same human life. There is no moment after conception when the wilful destruction of the foetus is not the murder of a human life.

As we said on a former occasion, or at least implied, man, though the ancients called him a microcosm, the universe in little, and contains in himself all the elements of nature, is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, nor simply an animal, and the analogies which the physiologist detects between him and the kingdoms below him, form no scientific basis of human physiology, for like is not same. There may be no difference that the microscope or the crucible can detect between the blood of an ox and the blood of a man; for the microscope and chemical tests are in both cases applied to the dead subject, not the living, and the human blood tested is withdrawn from the living action of the soul, an action that escapes the most powerful microscope, and the most subtile chemical agent. Comparative physiology may gratify the curiosity, and, when not pressed beyond its legitimate bounds, it may even be useful, and help us to a better understanding of our own bodies; but it can never be the basis of a scientific induction, because between man and all animals there is the difference of species. Comparative physiology is, therefore, unlike comparative philology; for, however diverse may be the dialects compared, there is no difference of species among them, and nothing hinders philological inductions from possessing, in the secondary order, a true scientific character. Physiological inductions, resting on the comparative study of different individuals, or different races or families of men, may also be truly scientific; for all these individuals, and all these races or families belong to one and the same species. But the comparative physiology that compares men and animals, gives only analogies, not science.

We do not undervalue science; on the contrary, what we complain of is, that our physiologists do not give us science; they give us facts, theories, or hypotheses. Facts are not science till referred to the principles that explain them, and these principles themselves are not science till integrated in the principles of that high and universal science called theology, and which is really the science of the sciences. The men who pass for savans, and are the hierophants and lawgivers of the age, sin not by their science, but by their want of science. Their ideal of science is too low and grovelling. Science is vastly more than they conceive it; is higher, deeper, broader than they look; and the best of them are, as Newton said of himself, mere boys picking up shells on the shores of the great ocean of truth. They, at best, remain in the vestibule of the temple of science; they have not entered the penetralia and knelt before the altar. We find no fault with Professor Draper's science, where science he has; we only complain of him for attempting to palm off upon us his ignorance for science, and accepting, and laboring to make us accept as science what is really no science. Yet he is not worse than others of his class.

The second work named in our list is the professor's attempt to extend the principles of his human physiology to the human race at large, and to apply them specially to the intellectual development of Europe; the third is an attempt to apply them to the civil policy of America, and the fourth is an attempt to get a counter-proof of his theories in the history of our late civil war. Through the four works we detect one and the same purpose, one and the same doctrine, of which the principal data are presented in his work on human physiology, which is cast in a purely materialistic mould. They are all written to show that all philosophy, all religion, all morality, and all history are to be physiologically explained, that is, by fixed, inflexible, and irreversible natural laws. He admits, in words, that man has free-will, but denies that it influences events or anything in the life and conduct of men. He also admits, and claims credit for admitting, a Supreme Being, as if there could be subordinate beings, or any being but one who declares himself I AM THAT AM; but a living and ever-present God, Creator, and upholder of the universe, finds no recognition in his physiological system. His God, like the gods of the old Epicureans, has nothing to do, but, as Dr. Evarist de Gypendole, in his Ointment for the Bite of the Black Serpent, happily expresses it, to "sleep all night and to doze all day." He is a superfluity in science, like the immaterial soul in the author's Human Physiology. All things, in Professor Draper's system, originate, proceed from, and terminate in, natural development, with a most superb contempt for the ratio sufficiens of Leibnitz, and the first and final cause of the theologians and philosophers. The only God his system recognizes is natural law, the law of the generation and death of phenomena, and distinguishable from nature only as the natura naturans is distinguishable from the natura naturata of Spinoza. His system is, therefore, notwithstanding his concessions to the Christian prejudices which still linger with the unscientific, a system of pure naturalism, and differs in no important respect from the Religion Positive of M. Augusta Comte.

The Duke of Argyle, in his Reign of Law, which we reviewed last February, a man well versed in the modern sciences, sought, while asserting the universal reign of law, to escape this system of pure naturalism, by defining law to be "will enforcing itself with power," or making what are called the laws of nature the direct action of the divine Will. But this asserted activity only for the divine Being, therefore denied second causes, and bound not only nature, but the human will fast in fate, or rather, absorbed man and nature in God; for man and nature do and can exist only in so far as active, or in some sense causative. The passive does not exist, and to place all activity in God alone is to deny the creation of active existences or second causes, which is the very essence of pantheism. Professor Draper and the positivists, whom he follows, reverse the shield, and absorb not man and nature in God, but both God and man in nature. John and James are not Peter, but Peter is James and John. There is no real difference between pantheism and atheism; both are absurd, but the absurdity of atheism is more easily detected by the common mind than the absurdity of pantheism. The one loses God by losing unity. and the other by losing diversity, or everything distinguishable from God. The God of the atheist is not, and the God of the pantheist is as if he were not, and it makes no practical difference whether you say God is all or all is God.

To undertake a critical review of these several works would exceed both our space and our patience, and, moreover, were a task that does not seem to be called for. Professor Draper, we believe, ranks high among his scientific brethren. He writes in a clear, easy, graceful, and pleasing style, but we have found nothing new or profound in his works. His theories are almost as old as the hills, and even older, if the hills are no older than he pretends. His work on the Intellectual Development of Europe, is in substance, taken from the positivists, and the positivist philosophy is only a reproduction, with no scientific advance on that of the old physiologers or hylozoists, as Cudworth calls them. He agrees perfectly with the positivists in the recognition of three ages or epochs, we should rather say stages, in human development; the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific or positivist. In the theological age, man is in his intellectual infancy, is filled with sentiments of fear and wonder; ignorant of natural causes and effects, of the natural laws themselves, he sees the supernatural in every event that surpasses his understanding or experience, and bows before a God in every natural force superior to his own. It is the age of ignorance, wonder, credulity, and superstition. In the second the intellect has been, to a certain extent, developed, and the gross fetichism of the first age disappears, and men no longer worship the visible apis, but the invisible apis, the spiritual or metaphysical apis; not the bull, but, as the North American Indian says, "the manitou of bulls;" and instead of worshipping the visible objects of the universe, as the sun, moon, and stars, the ocean and rivers, groves and fountains, storms and tempests, as did polytheism in the outset, they worship certain metaphysical abstractions into which they have refined them, and which they finally generalize into one grand abstraction, which they call Zeus, Jupiter, Jehovah, Theus, Deus, or God, and thus assert the Hebrew and Christian monotheism. In the third and last age there is no longer fetichism, polytheism, or monotheism; men no longer divinize nature, or their own abstractions, no longer believe in the supernatural or the metaphysical or anything supposed to be supramundane, but reject whatever is not sensible, material, positive as the object of positive science.

The professor develops this system with less science than its inventor or reviver, M. Auguste Comte and his European disciples; but as well as he could be expected to do it, in respectable English. He takes it as the basis of his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, and attempts to reconcile with it all the known and unknown facts of that development. We make no quotations to prove that we state the professor's doctrine correctly, for no one who has read him, with any attention, will question our statement; and, indeed, we might find it difficult to quote passages which clearly and expressly confirm it, for it is a grave complaint against him, as against nearly all writers of his school, that they do not deal in clear and express statements of doctrine. Had Professor Draper put forth what is evidently his doctrine in clear, simple, and distinct propositions, so that his doctrine could at once be seen and understood, his works, instead of going through several editions, and being commended in reviews and journals, as scientific, learned, and profound, would have fallen dead from the press, or been received with a universal burst of public indignation; for they attack everything dear to the heart of the Christian, the philosopher, and the citizen. Nothing worse is to be found in the old French Encyclopedists, in the Système de la Nature of D'Holbach, or in l'Homme-Plant, and l'Homme-Machine of Lamettrie. His doctrine is nothing in the world but pure materialism and atheism, and we do not believe the American people are as yet prepared to deny either God, or creation and Providence. The success of these authors is in their vagueness, in their refusal to reduce their doctrine to distinct propositions, in hinting, rather than stating it, and in pretending to speak always in the name of science, thus: "Science shows this," or "Science shows that;" when, if they knew anything of the matter, they would know that science does no such thing. Then, how can you accuse Professor Draper of atheism or materialism; for does he not expressly declare his belief, as a man of science, in the existence of the Supreme Being, and in an immaterial and immortal soul? What Dr. Draper believes or disbelieves, is his affair, not ours; we only assert that the doctrine he defends in his professedly scientific books, from beginning to end, is purely physiological, and has no God or soul in it. As a man. Dr. Draper may believe much; as an author, he is a materialist and an atheist, beyond all dispute: if he knows it, little can be said for his honesty; if he does not know it, little can be said for his science, or his competency to write on the intellectual development of Europe, or of any other quarter of the globe.

But to return to the theory the professor borrows from the positivists. As the professor excludes from his physiology the idea of creation, we cannot easily understand how he determines what is the infancy of the human race, or when the human race was in its infancy. If the race had no beginning, if, like Topsy, "it didn't come, but grow'd," it had no infancy; if it had a beginning, and you assume its earliest stage was that of infancy, then it is necessary to know which stage is the earliest, and what man really was in that stage. Hence, chronology becomes all-important, and, as the author's science rejects all received chronology, and speaks of changes and events which took place millions and millions of ages ago, and of which there remains no record but that chronicled in the rocks; but, as in that record exact dates are not given, chronology, with him, whether of the earth or of man, must be very uncertain, and it seems to us that it must be very difficult for science to determine, with much precision, when the race was, or what it was, in its infancy. Thus he says:

"In the intellectual infancy of the savage state, man transfers to nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that everything he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a constitution like his own. The tendency is necessarily to superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations of an indwelling spirit, and, therefore, worthy of his veneration." (Intellect. Devel. p. 2.)

We beg the professor's pardon, but he has only imperfectly learned his lesson. In this which he regards as the age of fetich worship, and the first stage of human development, he includes ideas and conceptions which belong to the second, or metaphysical age of his masters. But let this pass for the present. The author evidently assumes that the savage state is the intellectual infancy of the race. But how knows he that it is not the intellectual old age and decrepitude of the race? The author, while he holds, or appears to hold, like the positivists, to the continuous progress of the race, does not hold to the continuous progress of any given nation.

"A national type," he says, (ch. xi.,) "pursues its way physically and intellectually through changes and developments answering to those of the individual represented by infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death respectively."

How, then, say scientifically that your fetich age, or the age of superstition, the theological age of the positivists, instead being the infancy of the nation, is not its last stage next preceding death? How determine physiologically or scientifically that the savage is the infant man and not the worn-out man? Then how determine that the superstition of which you have so much to say, and which, with you, means religion, revelation, the church, everything that claims to be, or that asserts, anything supernatural, is not characteristic of the last stage of human development, and not of the first?

Our modern physiologists and anti-Christian speculators seem all to take it for granted that the savage gives us the type of the primitive man. We refuted this absurd notion in our essay on Faith and the Sciences. There are no known historical facts to support it. Consult the record chronicled in the rocks, as read by geologists. What does it prove? Why, in the lowest and most ancient strata in which human remains are found, along with those of extinct species of animals, you find that the men of that epoch used stone implements, and were ignorant of metals or unable to work them, and, therefore, must have been savages. That is, the men who lived then, and in that locality. Be it so. But does this prove that there did not, contemporary with them, in other localities or in other quarters of the globe, live and flourish nations in the full vigor of the manhood of the race, having all the arts and implements of civilized life? Did the savages of New England, when first discovered, understand working in iron, and used they not stone axes, and stone knives, many of which we have ourselves picked up? And was it the same with Europeans? From the rudeness and uncivilized condition of a people in one locality, you can conclude nothing as to the primitive condition of the race.

The infancy of the race, if there is any justice in the analogy assumed, is the age of growth, of progress; but nothing is less progressive, or more strictly stationary, in a moral and intellectual sense, than the savage state. Since history began, there is not only no instance on record of a savage tribe rising by indigenous effort to civilization, but none of a purely savage tribe having ever, even by foreign assistance, become a civilized nation. The Greeks in the earliest historical or semi-historical times, were not savages, and we have no evidence that they ever were. The Homeric poems were never the product of a savage people, or of a people just emerging from the savage state into civilization, and they are a proof that the Greeks, as a people, had juster ideas of religion, and were less superstitious in the age of Homer than in the age of St. Paul. The Germans are a civilized people, and if they were first revealed to us as what the Greeks and Romans called barbarians, they were never, as far as known, savages. We all know how exceedingly difficult it is to civilize our North American Indians. Individuals now and then take up the elements of our civilization, but rarely, if they are of pure Indian blood. They recoil before the advance of civilization. The native Mexicans and Peruvians have, indeed, received some elements of Christian civilization along with the Christian faith and worship; but they were not, on the discovery of this continent, pure savages, but had many of the elements of a civilized people, and that they were of the same race with the savages that roamed our northern forests, is not yet proved. The historical probabilities are not on the side of the hypothesis of the modern progressivists, but are on the side of the contrary doctrine, that the savage state belongs to the old age of the race—is not that from which man rises, but that into which he falls.

Nor is there any historical evidence that superstition is older than religion, that men begin in the counterfeit and proceed to the genuine,—in the false, and proceed by way of development to the true. They do not abuse a thing before having it. Superstition presupposes religion, as falsehood presupposes truth; for falsehood being unable to stand by itself, it is only by the aid of truth that it can be asserted. "Fear made the gods," sings Lucretius; but it can make none where belief in the gods, does not already exist. Men may transfer their own sentiments and passions to the divinity; but they must believe that the divinity exists before they can do it. They must believe that God is, before they can hear him in the wind, see him in the sun and stars, or dread him in the storm and the earthquake. It is not from dread of the strange, the powerful, or the vast, that men develop the idea of God, the spiritual, the supernatural; the dread presupposes the presence and activity of the idea. Men, again, who, like the professor's man in the infancy of the savage state, are able to conceive of spirit and to distinguish between the outward manifestation and the indwelling spirit, are not fetich worshippers, and for them the fetich is no longer a god, but if retained at all, it is as a sign or symbol of the invisible, Fetichism is the grossest form of superstition, and obtains only among tribes fallen into the grossest ignorance, that lie at the lowest round of the scale of human beings; not among tribes in whom intelligence is commencing, but in whom it is well-nigh extinguished.

Monotheism is older than polytheism, for polytheism, as the author himself seems to hold, grows out of pantheism, and pantheism evidently grows out of theism, out of the loss or perversion of the idea of creation, or of the relation between the creator and the creature, or cause and effect, and is and can be found only among a people who have once believed in one God, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible. Moreover, the earliest forms of the heathen superstitions are, so far as historical evidence goes, the least gross, the least corrupt. The religion of the early Romans was pure in comparison with what it subsequently became, especially after the Etruscan domination or influence. The Homeric poems show a religion less corrupt than that defended by Aristophanes. The earliest of the Vedas, or sacred books of the Hindoos, are free from the grosser superstitions of the latest, and were written, the author very justly thinks, before those grosser forms were introduced. This is very remarkable, if we are to assume that the grossest forms of superstition are the earliest! But we have with Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, no books that are of earlier date than the books of Moses, at least none that can be proved to have been written earlier; and in the books of Moses, in whatever light or character we take them, there is shown a religion older than any of the heathen mythologies, and absolutely free from every form of superstition, what is called the patriarchal religion, and which is substantially the Jewish and Christian religion. The earliest notices we have of idolatries and superstitions are taken from these books, the oldest extant, at least none older are known. If these books are regarded as historical documents, then what we Christians hold to be the true religion has obtained with a portion of the race from the creation of man, and, for a long series of years, from the creation to Nimrod, the mighty hunter or conqueror, was the only religion known; and your fetichisms, polytheisms, pantheisms, idolatries, and superstitions, which you note among the heathen, instead of being the religion of the infancy of the race, are, comparatively speaking, only recent innovations. If their authenticity as historical documents be denied, they still, since their antiquity is undeniable, prove the patriarchal religion obtained at an earlier date than it can be proved that any of the heathen mythologies existed. It is certain, then, that the patriarchal, we may say, the Christian religion, is the earliest known religion of the race, and therefore that fetichism, as contended by the positivists and the professor after them, cannot be asserted to have been the religion of the human race in the earliest stage of its existence, nor the germ from which all the various religions or superstitions of the world have been developed.

But we may go still farther. The attempt to explain the origin and course of religion by the study of the various heathen mythologies, and idolatries, and superstitions, is as absurd as to attempt to determine the origin and course of the Christian religion by the study of the thousand and one sects that have broken off from the church, and set up to be churches themselves. They can teach us nothing except the gradual deterioration of religious thought, and the development and growth of superstition or irreligion among those separated from the central religious life of the race. In the ancient Indian, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies, on which the author dwells with so much emphasis, we trace no gradual purification of the religious idea, but its continual corruption and debasement. As the sects all presuppose the Christian church, and could neither exist nor be intelligible without her, so those various heathen mythologies presuppose the patriarchal religion, are unintelligible without it, and could not have originated or exist without it. The professor having studied these mythologies in the darkness of no-religion, understands nothing of them, and finds no sense in them—as little sense as a man ignorant of Catholicity would find in the creeds, confessions, and religious observances of the several Protestant sects; but if he had studied them in the light of the patriarchal religion, which they mutilate, corrupt, or travesty, he might have understood them, and have traced with a steady hand their origin and course, and their relation to the intellectual development of the race.

We have no space to enter at length into the question here suggested. In all the civilized heathen nations, the gods are divided into two classes, the Dii Majores and the Dii Minores. The Dii Majores are only the result of a false effort to explain the mysterious dogma of the Trinity, and the perversion of the Christian doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son, and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost. The type from which these mythologies depart, not which they realize, is undeniably the mystery of the Trinity asserted, more or less explicitly, by the patriarchal religion; and hence, we find them all, from the burning South to the frozen North, from the East to the West, from the Old World to the New, asserting, in some form, in the Divinity the sacred and mysterious Triad. The Dii Minores are a corruption or perversion of the Catholic doctrine of saints and angels, or that doctrine is the type which has been perverted or corrupted, by substituting heroes for saints, and the angels that fell for the angels that stood, and taking these for gods instead of creatures. The enemies of Christianity have sufficiently proved that the common type of both is given in the patriarchal religion, hoping thereby to get a conclusive argument against Christianity; but they have forgotten to state that, while the one conforms to the type, the other departs from it, perverts or corrupts it, and that the one that conforms is prior in date to the one that corrupts, perverts or departs from it. No man can study the patriarchal religion without seeing at a glance that it is the various forms of heathenism that are the corrupt forms, as no man can study both Catholicity and Protestantism without seeing that Protestantism is the corruption, or perversion—sometimes even the travesty of Catholicity. The same conclusion is warranted alike by Indian and Egyptian gloom and Greek gayety. The gloom speaks for itself. The gayety is that of despair—the gayety that says: "Come, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." Through all heathendom you hear the wail, sometimes loud and stormy, sometimes low and melodious, over some great and irreparable loss, over a broken and unrealized ideal, just as you do in the modern sectarian and unbelieving world.

But why is it that the professor and others, when seeking to give the origin and course of religion, as related to the intellectual development of the race, pass by the patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian religion, and fasten on the religions or superstitions of the Gentiles? It is their art, which consists in adroitly avoiding all direct attacks on the faith of Christendom, and confining themselves in their dissertations on the natural history of the pagan superstitions, to establishing principles which alike undermine both them and Christianity. It is evident to every intelligent reader of Professor Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe, that he means the principles he asserts shall be applied to Christianity as well as to Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythology, and he gives many broad hints to that effect. What then? Is he not giving the history of the intellectual development of Europe? Can one give the history of that development without taking notice of religion? If, in giving the natural history of religion, showing whence and how it originates, what have been its developments, its course, its modifications, changes, decay, and death, by the influence of natural causes, science establishes principles which overthrow all religions, and render preposterous all claims of man to have received a supernatural revelation, to be in communion with the Invisible, or to be under any other providence than that of the fixed, invariable, and irresistible laws of nature, or purely physiological laws, whose fault is it? Would you condemn science, or subordinate it to the needs of a crafty and unscrupulous priesthood, fearful of losing their influence, and having the human mind emancipated from their despotism? That is, you lay down certain false principles, repudiated by reason and common sense, and which all real science rejects with contempt, call these false principles science, and when we protest, you cry out with all your lungs, aided by all the simpletons of the age, that we are hostile to science, would prevent free scientific investigation, restrain free manly thought, and would keep the people from getting a glimpse of the truth that would emancipate them, and place them on the same line with the baboon or the gorilla! A wonderful thing, is this modern science; and always places, whatever it asserts or denies, its adepts in the right, as against the theologians and the anointed priests of God!

The mystery is not difficult to explain. The physiologists, of course, are good Sadducees, and really, unless going through a churchyard after dark, or caught in a storm at sea, and in danger of shipwreck, believe in neither angel nor spirit. They wish to reduce all events, all phenomena, intellectual, moral, and religious, to fixed, invariable, inflexible, irreversible, and necessary laws of nature. They exclude in doctrine, if not in words, the supernatural, creation, providence, and all contingency. Every thing in man and in the universe is generated or developed by physiological or natural laws, and follows them in all their variations and changes. Religion, then, must be a natural production, generated by man, in conjunction with nature, and modified, changed, or destroyed, according to the physical causes to which he is subjected in time and place. This is partially true, or, at least, not manifestly false in all respects of the various pagan superstitions, and many facts may be cited that seem to prove it; but it is manifestly not true of the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian religion, and the only way to make it appear true, is to not distinguish that religion from the others, to include all religions in one and the same category, and conclude that what they prove to be partially true of a part, is and must be true of the whole. That this is fair or logical, is not a matter that the physiologists, who, where they detect an analogy, conclude identity, trouble themselves at all about; besides, nothing in their view is illogical or unfair that tends to discredit priests and theologians. Very likely, also, such is their disdain or contempt of religion, that they really do not know that there is any radical difference between Christianity and Gentooism. We have never encountered a physiologist, in the sense we use the term here, that is, one who maintains that all in the history of man and the universe proceeds from nature alone, who had much knowledge of Christian theology, or knowledge enough to be aware that in substance it is not identical with the pagan superstitions. Their ignorance of our religion is sublime.

We have thus far proceeded on the supposition that the professor means by the infancy of the savage state the infancy of the race; we are not sure, after all, that this is precisely his thought, or that he means anything more than the infancy of a particular nation or family of nations is the savage state. He, however, sums up his doctrine in his table of contents, chapter i., of his Intellectual Development, in the proposition: "Individual man is an emblem of communities, nations, and universal humanity. They exhibit epochs of life like his, and like him are under the control of physical conditions, and therefore of law;" that is, physical or physiological law, for "human physiology" is only a special department of universal physiology, as we have already indicated. It would seem from this that the author makes the savage state, as we have supposed, correspond, in the race, in universal humanity, as well as in communities, to the epoch of infancy in the individual. But does he mean to teach that the race itself has its epoch of infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death? He can, perhaps, in a loose sense, predicate these several epochs of nations and of political or civil communities; but how can he predicate them all of the race? "Individuals die, humanity survives," says Seneca; and are we to understand that the professor means to assert that the race is born like the individual, passes through childhood, youth, manhood, to old age, and then dies? Who knows what he means?

But suppose that he has not settled in his own mind his meaning on this point, as is most likely the case; that he has not asked himself whether man on the earth has a beginning or an end, and that he regards the race as a natural evolution, revolving always in the same circle, and takes, therefore, the infancy he speaks of as the infancy of a nation or a given community. Then his doctrine is, that the earliest stage of every civilized nation or community is the savage state, that the ancestors of the civilized in every age are savages, and that all civilization has been developed under the control of physical conditions from the savage state. The germ of all civilization then must be in the savage, and civilization then must be evolved from the savage as the chicken from the egg, or the egg from the sperm. But of this there is no evidence; for, as we have seen, there is no nation known that has sprung from exclusively savage ancestors, no known instance of a savage people developing, if we may so speak, into a civilized people. The theory rests on no historical or scientific basis, and is perfectly gratuitous. In the savage state we detect reminiscences of a past civilization, not the germs of a future civilization, or if germs—germs that are dead, and that never do or can germinate. There are degrees of civilization; people may be more or less civilized; but we have no evidence, historical or scientific, of a time when there was no civilized people extant. There are civilized nations now, and contemporary with them are various savage tribes, and the same may be said of every epoch since history began. The civilized nations whose origin we know have all sprung from races more or less civilized, never from purely savage tribes. The physiologists overlook history, and mistake the evening twilight for the dawn.

But pass over this. Let us come to the doctrine for which the professor writes his book, namely, individuals, communities, nations, universal humanity, are under the control of physical conditions, therefore of physical law, or law in the sense of the physiologists or the physicists. If this means anything, it means that the religion, the morality, the intellectual development, the growth and decay, the littleness and the grandeur of men and nations depend solely on physical causes, not at all on moral causes—a doctrine not true throughout even in human physiology, and supported by no facts, except in a very restricted degree, when applied to nations and communities. In the corporeal phenomena of the individual the soul counts for much, and in morbid physiology the moral often counts for more than the physical; perhaps it always does, for we know from revelation that the morbidity of nature is the penalty or effect of man's transgression. It is proved to be false as applied to nations and communities by the fact that the Christian religion, which is substantially that of the ancient patriarchs, is, at least as far as science can go, older than any of the false religions, has maintained itself the same in all essential respects, unvaried and invariable, in every variety of physical change, and in every diversity of physical condition, and absolutely unaffected by any natural causes whatever.

The chief physical conditions on which the professor relies are climate and geographical position. Yet what we hold to be the true religion, the primitive religion of mankind, has prevailed in all climates, and been found the same in all geographical positions. Nay, even the false pagan religions have varied only in their accidents with climatic and geographical positions. We find them in substance the same in India, Central Asia, on the banks of the Danube, in the heart of Europe, in the ancient Scania, the Northern Isles, in Mexico and Peru. The substance of Greek and Roman or Etrurian mythology is the same with that of India and Egypt. M. Rénan tells us that the monotheism so firmly held by the Arabic branch of the Semitic family, is due to the vast deserts over which the Arab tribes wander, which suggest the ideas of unity and universality; and yet for centuries before Mohammed, these same Arabs, wandering over the same deserts, were polytheists and idolaters; and not from contemplating those deserts, but by recalling the primitive traditions of mankind, preserved by Jews and Christians, did the founder of Islamism attain to the monotheism of the Koran. The professor is misled by taking, in the heathen mythology he has studied, the poetic imagery and embellishments, which indeed vary according to the natural aspects, objects, and productions of the locality, for their substance, thought, or doctrine. The poetic illustrations, imagery, and embellishments of Judaism are all oriental; but the Jew in all climates and in all geographical positions holds one and the same religious faith even to this day; and his only real difference from us is, that he is still looking for a Christ to come, while we believe the Christ he is looking for has come, and is the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified at Jerusalem, under Pontius Pilate.

We know the author contends that there has been from the beginning a radical difference between the Christianity of the East and that of the West; but we know that such is not and never has been the fact. The great Eastern fathers and theologians are held in as high honor in Western Christendom as they ever were in Eastern Christendom. Nearly all the great councils that defined the dogmas held by the Catholic Church throughout the whole world were held in the East. The Greeks were more speculative and more addicted to philosophical subtleties and refinements than the Latins, and therefore more liable to originate heresies; but nowhere was heresy more vigorously combated, or the one faith of the universal church more ably, more intelligently, or more fervently defended than in the East, before the Emperors and the Bishop of Constantinople drew the Eastern Church, or the larger part of it, into schism. But the united Greek Church, the real Eastern Church, the church of St. Athanasius, of the Basils, and the Gregories, is one in spirit, one in faith, one in communion with the Church of the West.

The author gravely tells us that Christianity had three primitive forms, the Judaical, which has ended; the Gnostic, which has also ended; the African, which still continues. But he has no authority for what he says. Some Jewish observances were retained for a time by Christians of Jewish origin, till the synagogue could be buried with honor; but there never was a Jewish form of Christianity, except among heretics, different from the Christianity still held by the church. There are some phrases in the Gospel of St. John, and in the Epistles of St. Paul that have been thought to be directed against the gnostics; and Clemens of Alexandria writes a work in which he uses the terms gnosis, knowledge, and gnostic, a man possessing knowledge or spiritual science, in a good sense; but, we suspect, with a design of rescuing these from the bad sense in which they were beginning to be used, as some of our European friends are trying to do with the terms liberal and liberalist. Nevertheless, what Clemens defends under these terms is held by Catholics to-day in the same sense in which he defends it. There never was an African form of Christianity distinct from the Christianity either of Europe or Asia. The two great theologians of Africa are St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, both probably of Roman, or, at least, of Italian extraction. The doctrine which St. Cyprian is said to have maintained on baptism administered by heretics, the only matter on which he differed from Rome, has never been, and is not now, the doctrine of the church. St. Augustine was converted in Milan, and had St. Ambrose, a Roman, for his master, and differed from the theologians either of the East or the West only in the unmatched ability and science with which he defended the faith common to all. He may have had some peculiar notions on some points, but if so, these have never been received as Catholic doctrine.

The professor might as well assert the distinction, asserted in Germany a few years since, which attracted some attention at the time, but now forgotten, between the Petrine gospel, the Pauline gospel, and the Joannine gospel, as the distinction of the three primitive forms of Christianity which he asserts. We were told by some learned German, we forget his name, that Peter, Paul, and John represent three different phases or successive forms of Christianity. The Petrine gospel represents religion, based on authority; the Pauline, religion as based on intelligence; and the Joannine, religion as based on love. The first was the so-called Catholic or Roman Church. The reformation made an end of that, and ushered in the Pauline form, or Protestantism, the religion of the intellect. Philosophy, science. Biblical criticism, and exegesis, the growth of liberal ideas, and the development of the sentiments and affections of the heart, have made an end of Protestantism, and are ushering in the Joannine gospel, the religion of love, which is never to be superseded or to pass away. The advocate of this theory had got beyond authority and intelligence, whether he had attained to the religion of love or not; yet the theory was only the revival of the well-known heresy of the Eternal Evangel of the thirteenth century. So hard is it to invent a new heresy. It were a waste of words to attempt to show that this theory has not the slightest foundation in fact. Paul and John assert authority as strenuously as Peter; Peter and John give as free scope to the intellect as Paul; and Peter and Paul agree with John in regard to love or charity. There is nothing in the Gospel or Epistles of John to surpass the burning love revealed, we might almost say concealed, so unostentatious is it, by the inflamed Epistles of Paul. As for Protestantism, silence best becomes it, when there is speech of intelligence, so remarkable is it for its illogical and unintellectual character. Protestants have their share of native intellect, and the ordinary degree of intelligence on many subjects; but in the science of theology, the basis of all the sciences, and without which there is, and can be, no real science, they have never yet excelled.

Nor did the reformation put an end to the so-called Petrine gospel, the religion of authority, the church founded on Peter, prince of the apostles. It may be that Protestantism is losing what little intellectual character it once had, and developing in a vague philanthropy, a watery sentimentality, or a blind fanaticism, sometimes called Methodism, sometimes Evangelicalism; but Peter still teaches and governs in his successor. The Catholic Church has survived the attacks of the reformation and the later revolution, as she survived the attacks of the persecuting Jews and pagans, and the power and craft of civil tyrants who sought to destroy or to enslave her, and is to-day the only religion that advances by personal conviction and conversion. Mohammedanism can no longer propagate itself even by the sword; the various pagan superstitions have reached their limits, and are recoiling on themselves; and Protestantism has gained no accession of territory or numbers since the death of Luther, except by colonization and the natural increase of the population then Protestant. The Catholic Church is not only a living religion, but the only living religion, the only religion that does, or can, command the homage of science, reason, free thought, and the uncorrupted affections of the heart. The Catholic religion is at once light, freedom, and love—the religion of authority, of the intellect, and of the heart, embracing in its indissoluble unity Peter, Paul, and John.

The professor's work on the intellectual development of Europe proves that religion in some form has constituted a chief element in that development. It always has been, and still is, the chief element in the life of communities and nations, the spring and centre of intellectual activity and progress. Even the works before us revolve around it, or owe their existence to their relation to it, and would have no intelligible purpose without it. The author has written them to divest religion of its supernatural character, to reduce it to a physiological law, and to prove that it originates in the ignorance of men and nations, and depends solely on physical conditions, chiefly on climate and geographical position. But in this patriarchal, Jewish, Christian religion there is something, and that of no slight influence on the life of individuals and nations, on universal humanity, that flatly contradicts him, that is essentially one and the same from first to last, superior to climate and geographical position, unaffected by natural causes, independent of physical conditions, and in no sense subject to physiological laws. This suffices to refute his theory, and that of the positivists, of whom he is a distinguished disciple; for it proves the uniform presence and activity in the life and development of men and nations, ever since history began, of a power, a being, or cause above nature and independent of nature, and therefore supernatural.

The theory that the rise, growth, decay, and death of nations depend on physical conditions alone, chiefly on climate and geographical position, seems to us attended with some grave difficulties. Have the climate and geographical positions of India, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, essentially changed from what they were at the epoch of their greatness? Did not all the great and renowned nations of antiquity rise, grow, prosper, decline, and die, in substantially the same physical conditions, under the same climate, and in the same geographical position? Like causes produce like effects. How could the same physical causes cause alike the rise and growth, and the decay and death of one and the same people, in one and the same climate, and in one and the same geographical position? Do you say, climate and even physical geography change with the lapse of time? Be it so. Be it as the author maintains, that formerly there was no variation of climate on this continent, from the equator to either pole; but was there for Rome any appreciable change in the climate and geography from the time of the third Punic war to that of Honorius, or even of Augustulus, the last of the Emperors? Or what change in the physical conditions of the nation was there when it was falling from what there was when it was rising?

Nations, like individuals, have, according to the professor, their infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death. But why do nations grow old and die? The individual grows old and dies, because his interior physical machinery wears out, and because he must die in order to attain the end for which he lives. But why should this be the case with nations? They have no future life to which death is the passage. The nation does not rise or fall with the individuals that found it. One generation of individuals passes away, and another comes, but the nation survives; and why, if not destroyed by external violence, should it not continue to survive and thrive to the end of time? There are no physical causes, no known physiological laws, that prevent it. Why was not Rome as able to withstand the barbarians, or to drive them back from her frontiers, in the fourth century, as she was in the first? Why was England so much weaker under the Stuarts than she had been under the Tudors, or was again under the Protector? Or why have we seen her so grand under Pitt and Wellington, and so little and feeble under Palmerston and Lord Russell? Can you explain this by a change of climate and geographical position, or any change in the physical conditions of the nation, that is, any physical changes not due to moral causes?

We see in several of the States of the Union a decrease, a relative, if not a positive decrease, of the native population, and the physical man actually degenerating, and to an extent that should alarm the statesman and the patriot. Do you explain this fact by the change in the climate and the geographical position? The geographical position remains unchanged, and if the climate has changed at all, it has been by way of amelioration. Do you attribute it to a change in the physical condition of the country? Not at all. There is no mystery as to the matter, and though the effects may be physical or physiological, the causes are well known to be moral, and chief among them is the immoral influence of the doctrine the professor and his brother physiologists are doing their best to diffuse among the people. The cause is in the loss of religious faith, in the lack of moral and religious instruction, in the spread of naturalism, and the rejection of supernatural grace—without which the natural cannot be sustained in its integrity—in the growth of luxury, and the assertion of material goods or sensible pleasures, as the end and aim of life. There is always something morally wrong where prizes need to be offered to induce the young to marry, and to induce the married to suffer their children to be born and reared.

So, also, do we know the secret of the rise, prosperity, decline, and death of the renowned nations of antiquity. The Romans owed the empire of the world to their temperance, prudence, fortitude, and respect for religious principle, all of them moral causes; and they owed their decline and fall to the loss of these virtues, to their moral corruption. The same may be said of all the ancient nations. Their religion, pure, or comparatively pure, in the origin, becomes gradually corrupt, degenerates into a corrupt and corrupting superstition, which hangs as a frightful nightmare on the breasts of the people, destroying their moral life and vigor. To this follows, with a class, scepticism, the denial of God or the gods, an Epicurean morality, and the worship of the senses; the loss of all public spirit—public as well as private virtue, and the nation falls of its own internal moral imbecility and rottenness, as our own nation, not yet a century old, is in a fair way of doing, and most assuredly will do, if the atheistic philosophy and morality of the physiologists or positivists become much more widely diffused than they are. The church will be as unable, with all her supernatural truth, grace, life, and strength, to save it, as she was to save the ancient Graeco-Roman Empire, for to save it would require a resurrection of the dead.

The common sense of mankind, in all ages of the world, has uniformly attributed the downfall of nations, states, and empires, to moral causes, not to physiological laws, climatic influences, or geographical position. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people. This is alike the voice of inspiration and of universal experience. The traveller who visits the sites of nations renowned in story, now buried in ruins, of cities once thronged with a teeming population, the marts of the world, in which were heard, from morning till night—till far into night—the din of industry, and marks the solitude that now reigns there; the barren waste that has succeeded to once fruitful fields and vineyards, and observes the poor shepherd that feeds a petty flock on the scanty pasturage, or the armed robber that watches for a victim to plunder, receives a far less vivid impression of the dependence of nations on physical causes and conditions, than of the influence of the moral world on the natural, and reads in legible characters the meaning of that fearful penalty which God pronounced, when he said to the man: "And the earth for thy sake shall be cursed." The physical changes that have come over Assyria, Syria, Lybia, Egypt, and Palestine, are the effects of the moral deterioration of man, not the cause of that deterioration.

The professor, after dilating almost eloquently, and as a sage, on the changeability, the transitoriness, the evanescent nature of all the visible forms of things, says: "If from visible forms we turn to directing law, how vast the difference! We pass from the finite, the momentary, the incidental, the conditional, to the illimitable, the eternal, the necessary, the unshackled. It is of law I am to speak in this book. In a world composed of vanishing forms, I am to vindicate the imperishability, the majesty of law, and to show how man proceeds in his social march in obedience to it," (Ibid. p, 16.) This sounds well; but, unhappily, he has told us that communities and nations, like individuals, are under the control of physical conditions, and therefore of law. If therefore of law, then under the law of physical conditions, and consequently of a physical or physiological law. He dwells on the grandeur of this conception, and challenges for it our deepest admiration. But we see not much to admire in a purely physical law manifesting itself in ceaseless instability, metamorphosis, and death. Will the author forgive us, if we hint that he possibly does not very well understand himself, or know precisely what it is that he says? Hear him. "I am to lead my reader, perhaps in a reluctant path, from the outward phantasmagorial illusions which surround us and so ostentatiously obtrude themselves on our attention, to something that lies in silence and strength behind. I am to draw his thoughts from the tangible to the invisible, from the limited to the universal, from the changeable to the invariable, from the transitory to the eternal; from the expedients and volitions so largely amusing in the life of man, to the predestined and resistless issuing of law from the fiat of God." (Ibid. p. 16, 17.) Very respectable rhetoric, but what does it mean? If it means anything, it means that the visible universe is unreal, an illusion, a phantasmagoria; that nothing is real, stable, permanent, but law, which lies in silence and strength behind the phantasmagoria, and that this law producing the illusion, dazzling us with mere sense-shows, is identically God, from whose fiat the phantasmagorial world issues. Is not this grand? is it not sublime? The scientific professor forgets that he may find readers, who can perceive through his rhetoric that he makes law or God the reality of things, instead of their creator or maker, simply their causa essentialis, the causa immanens of Spinoza, and therefore asserts nothing but a very vulgar form of pantheism, material pantheism, indistinguishable from naked atheism; for his doctrine recognizes only the material, the sensible, and by law he can mean only a physiological law like that by which the liver secretes bile, the blood circulates through the heart, seeds germinate, or plants bear fruit—a law which has and can have no indivisible unity.

If the professor means simply that in the universe all proceeds according to the law of cause and effect, he should bear in mind that there are moral causes and effects as well as physical, and supernatural as well as natural; but then he might find himself in accord with theologians, some of whom, perhaps, in his own favorite sciences are able to be his masters. It is not always safe to measure the ignorance of others by our own. No theologian denies, but every one asserts the law of cause and effect, precisely what no atheist, pantheist, or naturalist does do, for none of them ever rise above what the schools call causa essentialis, the thing itself, that which, as we say, makes the thing, makes it itself and not another, or constitutes its identity. Every theologian believes that God is logical, logic in itself, and that all his works are dialectical and realize a divine plan, which as a whole and in all its parts is strictly and rigidly logical. If the professor means simply to assert not only that all creatures and all events are under the control of the law of cause and effect, but also under the law of dialectics, there need be no quarrel between him and us; but in such case, if he had known a little theology, he might have spared himself and us a great deal of trouble, for we believe as firmly in the universal reign of law as he or his Grace of Argyle. But he would have gained little credit for original genius, depth of thought, profound science, or rare learning, and most likely would not have lived to see any one of his volumes reach a fifth edition.

But we must not be understood to deny in the development of nations or individuals all dependence on physical conditions, or even of climate and geographical position. Man is neither pure spirit, nor pure matter; he is the union of soul and body, and can no more live without communion with nature, than he can without communion with his like and with God. Hence he requires the three great institutions of religion, society, and property, which, in some form, are found in all tribes, nations, or civil communities, and without which no people ever does or can subsist. Climate and geographical influences, no doubt, count for something, for how much, science has not yet determined. There is a difference in character between the inhabitants of mountains and the inhabitants of plains, the dwellers on the sea-coast and the dwellers inland, and the people of the north and the people of the south; yet the Bas Bretons and the Irish have not lost perceptibly anything, in three thousand years, of their original character as a southern people, though dwelling for that space of time, we know not how many centuries longer, far to the north. Among the Irish you may find types of northern races, some of whom have overrun the Island as conquerors; but amid all their political and social vicissitudes, the Irish have retained, and still retain, their southern character. The English have received many accessions from Ireland and from the south, but they remain, the great body of them, as they originally were, essentially a northern people, and hence the marked difference between the Irish character and the English, though inhabiting very nearly the same parallels of latitude, and subject to much the same climatic and geographical influences. The character of both the English and the Irish is modified on this continent, but more by amalgamation, and by political and social influences, than by climate or geography. The Irish type is the most tenacious, and is not unlikely in time to eliminate the Anglo-Saxon. It has a great power of absorption, and the American people may ultimately lose their northern type, and assume the characteristics of a southern race, in spite of the constant influx of the Teutonic element. What we object to is not giving something to physical causes and conditions, but making them exclusive, and thus rejecting moral causes, and reducing man and nature to an inexorable fatalism.

In the several volumes of the professor, except the first named, we are able to detect neither the philosophical historian nor the man of real science. The respectable author has neither logic nor exact, or even extensive, learning, and the only thing to be admired in him, except his style, is the sublime confidence in himself with which he undertakes to discuss and settle questions, of which, for the most part, he knows nothing, and perhaps the sublimer confidence with which he follows masters that know as little as himself.

We own we have treated Professor Draper's work with very little respect, for we have felt very little. His Intellectual Development of Europe is full of crudities from beginning to end, and for the most part below criticism, or would be were it not that it is levelled at all the principles of individual and social life and progress. The book belongs to the age of Leucippus and Democritus, and ignores, if we may use an expressive term, though hardly English, Christian civilization and all the progress men and nations have effected since the opening of the Christian era. It is a monument not of science, but of gross ignorance.

Yet in our remarks we have criticised the class to which the author belongs, rather than the author himself. Men of real science are modest, reverential, and we honor them, whatever the department of nature to which they devote their studies. We delight to sit at their feet and drink in instruction from their lips; but when men, because they are passable chemists, know something of human physiology, or the natural history of fishes, undertake to propagate theories on God, man, and nature, that violate the most sacred traditions of the race, deny the Gospel, reduce the universe to matter, and place man on a level with the brute, theories, too, which are utterly baseless, we cannot reverence them, or listen to them with patience, however graceful their elocution or charming their rhetoric.

Morning At Spring Park.

Along the upland swell and wooded lawn
The aged farmer's voice is heard at dawn:
That well-known call across the dewy vale
Calls Spark and Daisy to the milking-pail.

The robin chirps; from farm to farm I hear
The bugle-note of wakeful chanticleer;
And far, far off, through grove and bosky dell,
The dreamy tinkle of sleek Snowflake's bell.

The huddling sheep, just loose from kindly fold,
Their nibbling way along the hill-side hold;
And timid squirrels and shy quails are seen
Flitting, unscared, across the shaded green.

The low horizon's dusky, violet blue
Is tinged with coming daylight's rosy hue,
Till o'er the golden fields of tasselled corn
Breaks all the rapture of the summer morn.

Through forest rifts the level sunbeams dart,
And gloomy nooks to sudden beauty start;
Those long, still lines which through rank foliage steal,
Undreamed-of charms among the woods reveal.

The yellow wheat-stooks catch the early light;
Far-nested homesteads gleam at once to sight;
While, from yon glimmering height, one spire serene
Points duly heavenward this terrestrial scene.

Long may the aged farmer's call be heard.
At dewy dawn, with song of matin bird.
Among his loving flocks and herds of kine,
A guileless master, watchful and benign.

And, when no more his agile footstep roves
These flowery pastures and these pleasant groves,
Good Shepherd, may thy call to fields more fair
Wean every thought from earth, make heaven his care!

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

Chapter III.

"Set is the sun of the Netterville's glory!
Down in the dust its bright banners are trailing!
Hoarse in our anguish we whisper the story,
And men, as they listen, like women are wailing.

"Woe! woe to us—woe! we shall see him no more;
Our tears like the rains of November are flowing;
Woe! woe to us—woe! for the chief we deplore
Alone to his exile of sorrow is going.

"Alone?—not alone! for our dastardly foemen—
As cruel as base in the day of their power—
Have lifted their hands against maidens and women;
Uprooted the tree, and then trampled the flower.

"And so they have sent her to weep by strange waters—
The joy of our hearts and the light of our eyes—
The latest and fairest of Netterville's daughters,
In whom the last link of their destiny lies.

"Sad will be, mother, thy waking to-morrow!
Waking to weep o'er thy dove-rifled nest;
Widowed and childless—two-fold is thy sorrow.
And two-edged the sword that is lodged in thy breast.

"Well may we mourn her—when we too deplore her—
The vassals and serfs of thy conquering race;
If blood could but do it, our blood should restore her—
Restore her to thee and thy loving embrace.

"Yet not for her only, or thee, are we weeping;
We weep for our country, fast bound in that chain
Which in blood from her wrung heart the foeman is steeping,
Till it looks as if reddened and rusted by rain.

"Oh! when shall a leader to true hearts be given.
To fall on the stranger and force him to flee?
And when shall the shackles that bind her be riven?
And Erin stand up in her strength, and be free!"

So sung Hamish, the son of the last of the long line of minstrels who, with harp and voice, had recorded the triumphs of the house of Netterville, or mourned over the death or sorrow of its chieftains. For, in spite of the law by which it was strictly forbidden, the English of the Pale had persisted in the national custom of keeping a bard or minstrel—whose office was always, or almost always, hereditary—attached to their households; and in its palmy days of power the family of Netterville was far too jealous of its own importance not to have been always provided with a similar appendage. Its last recognized minstrel had fallen, however, in the same battle which had deprived Nellie of her father, and, Hamish being then too young to take up his father's office, the harp had ever since, literally as well as figuratively, hung mute and unstrung in the halls of Netterville. But grief and indignation over its utter ruin had unlocked at last the tide of poetry and song, ever ready to flow over in the Celtic breast, and Hamish felt himself changed into a bard upon the spot. Forgetting the presence of the English soldiers, or, more probably, exulting in the knowledge that they did not understand the language in which he gave expression to his feelings, he stepped out into the midst of the people, pouring forth his lamentations, stanza after stanza, with all the readiness and fire of a born improvisatore; and when at last he paused, more for want of breath than want of matter, the keeners took up the tale, and told, in their wild, wailing chant, of the goodness and greatness, the glory and honour of their departed chieftain and his heiress, precisely as they would have done had the twain over whom they were lamenting been that very day deposited in their graves. Up to this moment Mrs. Netterville had preserved in a marvellous degree that statue-like calmness of outward bearing which hid, and even at times belied, the workings of a heart full of generous emotions; but the wild wailing of the keeners broke down the artificial restraint she had put upon her conduct, and, unable to listen quietly to what seemed to her ears a positive prophecy of death to her beloved ones, she hastily reëntered the house and retreated to her own apartment. This was a small, dark chamber, which in happier times had been set apart as a quiet retreat for prayer and household purposes, but which now was the only one the mistress of the mansion could call her own—the soldiers having that very morning taken possession of all the others, devoting some of them to their own particular accommodation and locking up the others. It was, in fact, as a very singular and especial favour, and as some return for the kindness she had shown in nursing one of their number who had been taken suddenly ill on the night of their arrival, that the use even of this small chamber had been allowed her; for it was not the custom of Cromwell's army to deal too gently by the vanquished, and many of the "transplanted," as high-born and well-educated as she was, had been compelled, in similar circumstances, to retire to the outer offices of their own abode, while the rough soldiery who displaced them installed themselves in the luxurious apartments of the interior.

Hidden from all curious eyes in this dark retreat, Mrs. Netterville yielded at last to the cry of her weak human heart, and, flinging herself face downward on the floor, gave way to a passion of grief which was all the more terrible that it was absolutely tearless. One or two of the few remaining women of the household, knowing how fearfully her soul, in spite of all outward show of calmness, must be wrung, tapped occasionally at the door; but either she did not hear or did not choose to answer, and they dared not enter without permission.

At last one of them went to Hamish, feeling instinctively that, if any one could venture to intrude unbidden, it would be the foster-brother of Nellie, and said:

"The mistress, God help her! is just drowned with the sorrow, and won't even answer when we call. Hamish, a-bouchal, couldn't you manage to go in, just by accident like, and say something or other to give a turn to her thoughts?"

"Give a turn to her thoughts?" said Hamish crustily; "give a turn to her thoughts, do you say? My certie, but you take it easy! Hasn't the woman lost husband and child, to say nothing of the old lord, who was all as one to her as her own father? and isn't she going, moreover, to be turned out of house and home, and sent adrift upon the wide world? and you talk of giving a turn to her thoughts, as if it was the toothache she was troubled with or a wasp that had stung her?"

"As you please, Mr. Hoity-toity," said the girl angrily; "I only thought that, as you were a bit of a pet like, on account of our young mistress, you might have ventured on the liberty. Not having set up in that line myself, I cannot, of course, attempt to meddle in the matter."

But though Hamish had spoken roughly, his heart was very sore, for all that, over the sorrows of his lonely mistress.

He waited until Cathleen had vanished in a huff, and then, going quietly to the study-door, knocked softly for admission.

But Mrs. Netterville gave no sign, and, after knocking two or three times in vain, he opened the door gently and looked in. The room was naturally a gloomy one, being panelled in black oak; but Hamish felt as if it never could have looked before so gloomy as it did that moment. Half study, half oratory as it was, Mrs. Netterville had spent here many a long hour of lonely and impassioned prayer, what time her husband and her father-in-law were fighting the battles of their royal and most ungrateful master. A tall crucifix, carved, like the rest of the furniture, in black oak, stood, therefore, on a sort of prie-dieu at the farther end of the room, and near it was a table arranged in desk-fashion, at which she had been in the habit of transacting the business of her household.

Room and prie-dieu, crucifix and table, Hamish had them all by heart already.

Here in his baby days he had been used to come, when he and his little foster-sister were wearied with their own play, to sit at the feet of Mrs. Netterville and listen to the tales which she invented for their amusement. Here, as time went on, separating Nellie outwardly from his society, yet leaving her as near to him in heart as ever, he had been wont to bring his morning offerings of fish from the running stream, or bunches of purple heather from the rocks. Here he had come for news of the war, and of the master, on that very day which brought tidings of his death; and here, too, even while he tried to comfort Nellie, who had flung herself down in her childish misery just on the spot where her mother lay prostrate now, he had wondered, and, young as he was, had in part, at least, comprehended the marvellous self-forgetfulness of Mrs. Netterville, who, in the midst of her own bereavement, had yet found heart and voice to comfort her aged father-in-law and her child, as if the blow which had struck them down had not fallen with three-fold force on her own head. In the darkness of the room and the confusion of his own thoughts, he did not, however, at first perceive Mrs. Netterville in her lowly posture, and glanced instinctively toward the prie-dieu, where he had so often before seen her take refuge in the hour of trial.

But she was not there, and a thrill of terror ran through his frame when he at last discovered her, face downward, on the floor, her widow's coif flung far away, and her long locks, streaked—by the hand of grief, not time—abundantly with gray, streaming round her in a disorder which struck Hamish all the more forcibly, that it was in such direct contrast to the natural habits of order and propriety she had brought with her from her English home. There she lay, not weeping—such misery as hers knows nothing of the relief of tears—not weeping, but crushed and powerless, as if her very body had proved unequal to the weight of sorrow put upon it, and had fallen beneath the burthen. She seemed, indeed, not in a swoon, but stunned and stupefied, and quite unconscious that she was not alone. Hamish trembled for her intellect; but young as he was, he was used to sorrow, and understood both the danger and the remedy.

His lady must be roused at any cost, even at that the very thought of which made him tremble, the recalling her to a full knowledge of her misery. He advanced farther into the room, moving softly, in his great reverence for her desolation, as we move, almost unconsciously to ourselves, in the presence of the dead, and occupied himself for a few minutes in arranging the loose papers on her desk, and the flowers which Nellie had placed upon the prie dieu only a day or two before. They were faded now—faded as the poor child's fortunes—but instead of throwing them away, he poured fresh water into the vase which held them, as if that could have restored their beauty. Yet he sighed heavily as he did so for the thought would flash across his mind that, whether he sought to give, back life to a withered flower, or joy to the heart of a bereaved mother, in either case his task was hopeless. Mrs. Netterville took no notice of his proceedings, though, as he began to get used to the situation, he purposely made rather more bustle than was needed, in hopes of arousing her. At last, in despair of succeeding by milder methods, he let fall a heavy inkstand, smashing it into a thousand pieces, and scattering the ink in all directions, an event that in happier times would certainly not have passed unreproved. But now she lay within a few inches of the inky stream, as heedless as though she were dead in earnest; and, hopeless of recalling her to consciousness by anything short of a personal appeal, he knelt down beside her and tapped her sharply on the shoulder, half wondering at his own temerity as he did so. She shuddered as if, light as the touch had been, it yet had hurt her, and muttered impatiently, and like one half asleep:

"Not now, Hamish! not now!—leave me for the present, I entreat you!"

"And why not now?" Hamish answered almost roughly. "Do you think you only have a cause for grieving? Tell me, my mistress, if we, humble as we are, and not to be thought of in comparison with your ladyship's honor, if we have not lost—are losing nothing? Ah! if you could but hear the weeping and wailing that is going on among the creatures down-stairs, you would never do us such a wrong as to suppose that your heart is the only one sore and bleeding to-day!"

"Sore and bleeding! Yes! yes! I doubt it not," moaned the lady sadly. "Sore and bleeding; but not widowed—not childless; they have still husbands and children—they have not lost as I have lost!"

"They have lost—not, may be, quite so much, but yet enough, and more than enough, to set them wailing," answered Hamish firmly— "they have lost a master, who was more like a father than a master, and a young mistress, who was all as one as a daughter to every one of them; and moreover," he added mournfully—"and moreover, instead of the kind hand and generous heart that has reigned over them till now, they are going to be handed over, (as if they were so many stocks or stones encumbering the land,) whether they like it or whether they don't, to the tender mercies of those very men who thought it neither sin nor shame to make the child a shield against the soldier's sword, when they fought knee-deep in blood at the siege of Tredagh!"

"Why do you say these things, Hamish?" she almost shrieked in her anguish. "Is it my fault? Could I help it? or why do you reproach me with it?"

"Your fault! No, indeed, it is not. More's the pity; for if you could have helped it, to a dead certainty it never would have happened," said Hamish, glad that he had roused her, even if only to a fit of anger. "But though you cannot prevent these things, my mistress, you can at all events comfort the creatures that have to bear them, by showing that you have feelings for their sorrows as well as for your own."

"I give comfort! God help me, I give comfort!" she answered, with a sort of passionate irony in her manner; adding, however, immediately afterward, in a softer tone, "How can I give comfort, Hamish—I who need it so entirely myself?"

"That is the very thing," cried Hamish eagerly. "God love you, madam! Do you not see that the only real comfort you could give them would be the allowing them to try at least and comfort you?"

"Bid them pray, then, for the safe journey of my loved ones," she answered hoarsely—"that is the only real comfort they can give me."

"And why, then, couldn't we pray all together?" cried Hamish, struck suddenly by a bright idea. "Why wouldn't you let them come up here, madam? I warrant you they would pray as the best of them never prayed before, if they only seen your ladyship's honor kneeling and praying in the midst of them."

"I—I cannot pray—I cannot even think," she answered, laying her head once more on her folded arms, like a weary or a chidden child. "Go you, good Hamish, and pray yourself with them down-stairs."

"In the kitchen, is it?" said Hamish, with a considerable portion of irony in his voice. "Faix, my lady, and it's queer thoughts we'd have, and queer prayers we would be saying there, with the pot forenent us, boiling on the fire, and Cromwell's black rogues of troopers coming and going, and flinging curses and scraps of Scriptures (according to their usual custom) in equal measure at our heads. No! no! my lady," he continued vehemently, "if you would have us pray at all, it must be here—here where the cross will mind us of a Mother who once stood at its foot, and who was even more desolate than you are; a Mother silent and heart-broken—not because her Child had gone before her into exile, from whence He might any day return, but because she saw Him dying—dying in the midst of tortures—and forsaken so entirely that it might well have seemed to her (only she knew that never could be) as if God as well as man had utterly abandoned Him."

"You are right, Hamish; you are right," cried Mrs. Netterville suddenly, touched to the quick by his voice and eloquence. "Go you down at once, good Hamish, and bid them come here directly. I shall be ready by the time they are assembled."

As Mrs. Netterville spoke thus, she rose from the floor, and then, all at once perceiving the strange disorder of her attire, she began hastily to gather up her tresses, previous to placing her widow's coif upon them.

Hamish waited to hear no more, but instantly left the room to do her bidding. As he walked rapidly toward the lower part of the mansion, he drew a long sigh of relief, like one who has just got rid of a heavy burden, as in truth he had; for he felt that he had gained his point, and that whatever his mistress might have yet to suffer, she was safe, at all events, from the effects of that first great shock of sorrow which had threatened to overturn her intellect.

When he returned to announce that the household was assembled and waiting for her further orders he found her kneeling at the prie-dieu, in all the grave composure of her usual manner. She did not trust herself, however, to look round, but merely signed to him that they should come in; and the instant the noise and bustle of their first entrance had subsided, she commenced reading from her open missal.

But the very sound of her own voice in supplicatory accents seemed to break the spell which had hitherto been laid upon her faculties. She fairly broke down and burst into a flood of tears. This was more than enough for the excitable hearts around her, and the room was filled in a moment with the wailing of her people. Hamish was in despair; and yet, perhaps, no other mode of proceeding could have done so much toward calming her as did this sudden outburst; for Mrs. Netterville had a true Englishwoman's aversion to "scenes," however real and natural to the circumstances of the case they might be. She instantly checked her tears, and waiting quietly until the storm of grief had in some degree died out, she collected all her energies, and read in a low, steady voice the prayer or collect for those travelling by land or sea, as she found it in her missal. A few other short but earnest prayers succeeded, and then she paused once more. Her audience took the hint and quietly retired. Hamish was about to follow, but she rose from the prie-dieu, and signed to him to remain.

"Hamish," she said, gently but decidedly, "I have done your bidding, and now I expect that you will do mine. I wish to be alone for the rest of the day—do you understand? alone with God and my great sorrow! To-morrow I will begin the work for which I have been left here, but to-day must be my own. Come not here yourself, and look to it that no one else disturbs me. Keep a heedful watch upon the soldiers, and see that no mischance occurs between them and any of our people, I trust to you for this and all things. Now leave me. If I have need of anything, I will let you know."

There was that in Mrs. Netterville's tone and manner which made Hamish feel he had gone quite far enough already; so, without another word of remonstrance or expostulation, he made his reverence and retired.

Chapter IV.

Mrs. Netterville waited until the echo of his retreating footsteps had died away in the corridor, and then fastening the door so as to secure herself from any further interruption from the outside, she once more fell on her knees before the crucifix, and buried her face in both her hands. How long she remained thus she never knew exactly; but the shades of a short January evening were already gathering in the room, when, with a start and a look as if her conscience smote her, she rose suddenly from her knees. "Christ pardon me!" she muttered half aloud, "that, in my own selfish sorrows, I have forgotten others! Poor wretch! By this time he must be well-nigh famished, if, indeed, (though I trust it will not,) the delay has not worked him deeper mischief."

As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she opened a cupboard close at hand, and drew from thence a bottle of wine, with some other articles of delicate food, packed carefully in a wicker-basket, and evidently left there for some especial purpose. She then sought through the gloom for a cloak, which she threw upon her shoulders, and, drawing the hood down over her face, and taking the basket on her arm, she hastily left the room. Not, however, by the door through which Hamish and the servants had retreated, but by another at the opposite end, and which was almost invisible, in consequence of its forming one of the panels in the black oak wainscoting of the chamber. It led her directly by a short stone passage to another door or low wicket, on opening which she found herself in the private grounds of the castle. Before her at no great distance, stood an old ivy-covered church, half hidden in a group of tall Irish trees, which sheltered its little cemetery. This was not the parish church, but a private chapel, built by the Netterville family for their own particular use; and here their infants had been baptized, their daughters married, and their old men and women laid reverently to their last slumbers, ever since they had established their existence in the land.

Mrs. Netterville could not resist a sigh as she glanced toward its venerable walls. It seemed as if it were only yesterday that she had gone there to lay down her husband in his lowly grave, hoping and praying, out of the depths of her own great grief, that she might soon be permitted to sleep quietly beside him. And now, even this sad hope was to be hers no longer; this poor possession of six feet of earth was to be wrested from her; strangers would lay her in a distant grave, and even in death she would be separated from her husband. The thought was too painful to bear much lingering upon it, and turning her back upon the church, Mrs. Netterville followed a path which lay close under the castle walls, and led to a court-yard at a considerable distance. Round this court-yard were grouped stables and other offices, which, having been built at different periods and without any consecutive idea as a whole, presented rather the appearance of a collection of stunted farm-houses, than of the regular out-buildings of an important mansion.

Each of these houses had a private entrance of its own; and opening the door of one of them, Mrs. Netterville looked in quietly and entered. The interior was a room, poorly but yet decently furnished, and on a low settle-bed at the farther end lay a young man, who, with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, had all the look of a person just rescued from the jaws of death. A knapsack on the floor, a pike and musket in one corner of the room, and a steel cap and buff coat in another, seemed to announce him as one of the band of successful soldiers who were even then in possession of the castle.

Poor fellow! he lay, with closed eyes, wan and weary, on his bed, looking, at that moment, like anything rather than like a successful soldier; but he lifted his head as he caught the noise of the door creaking on its hinges, and his face brightened into an expression of joy and gratitude pleasant to behold when he discovered Mrs. Netterville standing on the threshold.

"Can you ever forgive me?" she said, going up to him at once. "I cannot easily forgive myself for having left you so long alone. In the grief and anguish in which I have been plunged all day, I had well-nigh forgotten your existence, and you must be faint, I fear me, for want of nourishment."

"Nay, madam," he answered, gently, indeed, but yet with a good deal of that comfortable self-assurance in spiritual matters which seems to have been an especial inheritance of "Cromwell's saints." "If you have forgotten, the Lord at least hath been mindful of his servant, and hath cast so deep a slumber on my senses, that I have been altogether unconscious of the lapse of time, or of the absence of those carnal comforts which, however the spirit may rebel against them, are nevertheless not altogether to be despised, as being the means by which we receive strength to do the bidding of our Master."

Mrs. Netterville could not help thinking that the posset-cup and soothing draught, which she had administered the night before, might have had as much as any especial interposition of Providence to say to his seasonable slumbers; but the times were too much out of joint to permit of her making, however reverently, such an observation, so she merely touched his brow and hand, and said:

"I am right glad, at all events, that you seem in nowise to have suffered from my neglect. Eat now and drink, I pray you; for I perceive by this refreshing moisture on your skin that all danger has passed away, and that you need at present no worse physic than good food and wine to restore you to your former strength."

"Nay, madam," said the soldier, with great and hardly repressed feeling in his voice and manner. "Eat or drink I cannot, or in any way refresh myself, until I have poured forth my song of gratitude, first to the Lord of hosts, who hath delivered me from this great danger, and then to you, who have tended me (even as the widow of Sarepta might have waited on Elias) through the perils of a sickness from which my very comrades and fellow-laborers in the vineyard fled, trembling and afraid."

"You must pardon them, good Jackson," said Mrs. Netterville, "and all the more readily, because this disease, from which you have so marvellously recovered, is, men say, in its rapid progress and almost sure mortality, akin, if not indeed wholly similar, to that terrible malady the plague, which is the scourge of the Eastern nations, and leaves crowded cities, once it has entered in, as silent and deserted as the sepulchres of the dead. You cannot therefore wonder, and you need not feel aggrieved, if men who would have risked their lives for you on the battle-field, yet shrunk from its unseen, and therefore, to poor human nature, its more awful dangers."

"Nay, madam, I blame them not; perhaps even in their place I should have done the same. Nevertheless—and though I have no ill feeling toward them—I cannot forget that you, a Popish woman and an enemy, have done that for me which the very children of my own household have shrunk from doing, and I would fain show my gratitude if I could."

"You can show it, and that right easily, if you will," she answered kindly, "by eating and drinking heartily of the provisions I have brought, and so regaining strength to wait all the sooner on yourself. For I shall soon, as you doubtless know already, have work in hand which will compel me to make my visits fewer; and yet I shall not like to risk other lives by sending any of the household to wait on you in my stead."

"Alas! madam, I fear I have been but a troublesome and unprofitable, though not altogether, I do assure you, a thankless guest," the man answered, in a somewhat sad and deprecatory manner.

"Nay; but now you mistake me altogether," she answered earnestly. "You have been a most patient sufferer, and that trouble—which is altogether unavoidable in any sickness—has been, you may believe me, a pleasure rather than an uneasiness to me. I only meant to say that, though I shall still continue to visit you morning and evening, I shall not be able to come so often in the daytime as I have been used to do; for all matters in this sad affair of the transplantation having fallen into my hands, you may well imagine it is as much or more than one poor woman can well accomplish by her own unaided efforts."

"Would that I could aid you," he answered fervently—"would that I could comfort you! But, alas! in this matter of the transplantation, I can do naught, seeing that it is the Lord himself who hath girded on our swords, bidding us to smite and spare not. Nevertheless, lady, I am not ungrateful, and in the long, sleepless nights of my weary malady I have wrestled for you in prayer, striving exceedingly and being much exercised on your account; nor gave I over until I had received the comfortable assurance that, as the Lord sent angels to Lot to deliver him out of Sodom, so he would some day make of me a shield and a defence, whereby you might be snatched from the woes that he is about to rain down on this land, because 'the cry of its idolatry is waxen great before his face,' and he hath sworn to destroy it."

"Well, well!" she answered a little impatiently, "I thank you for your good-will, at all events; but for the present we will discourse no further on this matter. God will one day judge between us, and by his fiat I am content to stand or fall, in all those matters of religion on which, unhappily, we differ. See, I have trimmed the lamp so that it will burn brightly until morning, and there is food and wine on this little table. I will put it close to the bed, so that when you need nourishment, you will have but to put forth your hand to take it. And now I must say good-night—to-morrow I will be with you by the early dawn."

Having thus done all that either charity or hospitality could ask at her hands, Mrs. Netterville retired from the room, sooner, probably, than she would have done if the soldier's last words had not grated on her ear, and roused more angry passions than she wished to yield to in her breast.

"He has a good heart, poor wretch," she thought, as she took her way back to the castle; "but strange and fearful is it to see how pride, in him, as in all his comrades, usurps the place of true humility and religion."

The sudden sound of a pistol going off disturbed her in the midst of her cogitations; and with a pang of indescribable fear and presentiment of evil at her heart, she stood still. It seemed to come from the grove of yew-trees round the church, and was not repeated. Having ascertained this fact, she walked rapidly forward in the direction of the sound, her mind in a perfect whirl of fear, and only able to shape itself into the one thought, pregnant of future evil, that, either by some of her own people, or by one of the English soldiers, a murder had been committed. Just as she entered the grove of yew-trees, she perceived something like the loose garb of a woman fluttering down the path before her, and then suddenly disappearing behind the tower of the little church. She did not dare to call out; but feeling certain that this person must either have fired the shot herself, or have seen it fired by some one else, she quickened her pace in order to overtake her. Twilight was already deepening among the yew-trees; the path, moreover, was overgrown with weeds and brambles, and as she ran with her eyes fixed on the spot where the figure had disappeared, she felt herself suddenly tripped up by some object lying right before her, and fell heavily against it. At the first touch of that unseen something, a sense of terror, such as animals are said to be conscious of in the presence of their own dead, seized upon her senses, and all the blood was curdling in her veins as slowly and with difficulty she removed herself from its contact. Gradually, as she recovered from the stunning effects of her fall, and her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom around her, the "thing" on the ground shaped itself into the form of a human being—but of a human being so still and motionless, that it seemed probable it was a corpse already. Very reluctantly she put forth her hand to try if life were really extinct; but suddenly discovering that she was dabbling it in a pool of yet warm blood, she withdrew it with a shudder.

"My God! my God!" she moaned, "what enemy hath done this? Surely it is one of the soldiers from the castle, and they will accuse our people of the murder! Grant Heaven, indeed, that they are innocent! Would that Hamish were here to help me. Yet no! they would certainly in that case try to fix the guilt on him. I will go hence and let them discover it as they can. Yet what if I should meet them? I am all dabbled in his gore!"

With a new and sharp terror in her heart, as this thought took possession of it, she began hastily to rub her hands in the moss and dry leaves around her, in order to free them from the blood which clung to them; and she was still engaged in this rather equivocal occupation when a sudden stream of light was cast on her from behind, and, rising suddenly, she found herself face to face with the officer who had been left in command of the garrison of the castle.

Half-a-dozen of his men were at his back, and by the light of the lantern, which he carried, she read in their faces their conviction of her guilt. At a sign from their chief they surrounded her in awful silence, and he himself laid his hand heavily on her shoulder:

"Murderess!" he said, "thou art taken in thy sin!"

"I did it not," cried Mrs. Netterville, so utterly confounded by this terrible accusation that she hardly knew what she said. "So help me Heaven! I am innocent of this deed!"

"Innocent! sayest thou?" the officer answered firmly. "Innocent! thou with his blood red upon thy hands! Yea, and thy very garments clotted in his gore! If then thou art innocent, as thou wouldst have us to believe, say what wert thou doing in this lonely spot at an hour when none but the murderer or the wanton would care to be abroad?"

"I was returning from a visit to the soldier Jackson—a visit which, as thou knowest, Master Rippel, I pay him every evening at the hour of dusk; and I had well-nigh reached the castle, when hearing a shot in this direction, and fearing mischief either for my own people or for thine, I came hither if possible to prevent it."

"A likely story, truly!" replied the officer, who, unluckily for her, was one of the fiercest, if not the saintliest, of the band of warriors then domiciled at the castle. "Nay, woman, and for thine own sake hold thy peace, or out of thine own mouth thou shalt stand presently condemned. For tell me, my masters," he added, addressing the other men, "where will you find a woman, who, hearing a shot, and dreading mischief, would not have fled from the danger, instead of incontinently rushing, as she would have us to believe she did, into its very jaws?"

"Yet have I rushed into the jaws of danger more than once already within this fortnight, and that not for the sake of my own people but of thine; as none ought to know better than thou, Master Rippel, and thy comrades," Mrs. Netterville, now fairly put upon her mettle, retorted bravely.

"Nay, and that is naught but the very truth, though the father of lies (which is Beelzebub) himself had said it," one of the men here ventured to remark. "For surely, Captain Rippel, you cannot have forgotten that we should have had a soldier the less in the camp of Israel, if she had not nursed the good youth Jackson through this black business of the plague, when we, even we, men anointed and girded to the fight, did hesitate to go near him."

"Ha! Dost thou also venture to defend her?" cried the officer angrily. "Nay, then, let that woman which is called Deborah be brought forward and confronted with the prisoner. Her testimony must decide between us."

One or two of the soldiers who had been lingering at a little distance in the dusky twilight now advanced, half pushing before them, half leading, the very woman who had addressed Nellie so impudently in the morning. She came forward with a strange mixture of eagerness and reluctance in her manner; willing enough, it might be, to bear false testimony against her neighbor, but very unwilling to be confronted with its object.

They placed her face to face with Mrs. Netterville, and the captain turned his lantern so that the light fell full on the features of the latter. They were cold and calm, and almost disdainful in their expression, now that she knew who was her accuser; and Deborah, spite of all her efforts to brazen out the interview, cowered beneath her glance of scorn.

"Nay, but look well upon her, Deborah," said the captain, seeing that her eyes fell beneath those of the woman she had accused. "Look well upon her, and say if this be not that Moabitish woman whom thou sawest, as thou wert lingering (for no good purpose, I do fear me greatly) in the shadow of the trees—whom thou sawest, say I, steal hither between light and darkness, and treacherously do to death our brother Tomkins, who, being—as methinks you revealed to me just now—wearied overmuch with prayer and holding forth, (he was, as I myself can testify, a man of most precious doctrine, and greatly favored in the gift of preaching,) had come hither to repose himself."

"Nay," said the woman, speaking in very tolerable English, an accomplishment she had picked up when in service in Dublin; "of that great weariness caused by too much prayer and preaching. Master Rippel, I said naught—my own impression being," she added, unable even before such an audience to repress the gibe, "that the slumberous inclinations of worthy Master Tomkins had been caused by a somewhat too ardent devotion lately tendered to the wine-cask."

"Peace, scoffer! peace!" cried the captain. "And if thou wouldst have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as being the person whom you espied just now in the act—yea, the very act of murder."

"I can," said the woman shortly, and avoiding the eye of Mrs. Netterville as she spoke.

"Thou canst?" the latter said in a tone of indignant astonishment. "And pray, if thou wert watching me so narrowly, why didst thou not endeavor to prevent me?—why not strike up my weapon?—why not cry out, at least, so as to rouse up the sleeping soldier?"

"I did what I could," the woman sullenly responded. "I sought out his comrades. It was their look-out, not mine, and to them accordingly I left it."

"She speaks the truth, as we who so lately heard her tale can testify," the captain answered quickly. "You see, my men," he added, addressing the other soldiers, "Beelzebub is divided against himself, and the very children of his kingdom bear witness against each other. Surely the woman Netterville is guilty. Take her, therefore, some of you, a prisoner to the castle, while the rest prepare a decent burial for our murdered brother. I myself must speak apart with the witness Deborah, in order to put her testimony into a fitting shape to be laid before the court of my lords, the high commissioners of justice."

Chapter V.

The sun had climbed well-nigh midway in the heavens, lighting up Clew Bay and its hundred isles until they glinted like emeralds in the blue setting of the sea, as an old, white-haired man and a young girl—the latter carrying a small bundle in one hand, while with the other she supported the failing strength of her companion, made their way, slowly and painfully, along the valley through which runs the bright "Eriff" river on its way to the ocean. Following the up course of the stream, they had passed, almost without knowing it, through some of the finest of the mountain scenery of the west, up hill and down hill, by pretty cascades, in which the river seemed to be playing with the obstacles which opposed it; round huge bare shoulders of rifted and out-jutting rock; through dark, deep purple gorges, which looked as if the mountains had been wrenched violently asunder in order to produce them; and now, at last, they found themselves in a quiet, dreary-looking glen, where cushions of soft moss and yielding heather seemed to woo them to repose. Nevertheless, footsore and worn out as they evidently were, they continued to press bravely forward until they had nearly arrived at the farther end of the valley; but by that time the old man's head had begun to droop wearily on his breast, and his steps had become so languid and uncertain that it was evident it would be perilous to proceed farther without giving him the rest he so absolutely required. Choosing, therefore, a little nook, where the turf grew soft and dry, and where clusters of tall fern and heather, rising nearly six feet from the root, seemed to promise at least partial shelter from the midday sun, the girl quietly disposed of her bundle as a pillow for his head, and invited him with a smile to a siesta. He obeyed as readily as if he had been a child, and she then sat down beside him, crooning an old nursery lullaby to hush him into slumber. But she sought no such salutary oblivion for herself; and no sooner had his eyes begun to close in sleep than she rose, and, as if anxiety had rendered her incapable of remaining quiet, wandered restlessly on until she reached the top of a hill which shut in the valley from the land beyond. There she paused, fear and foreboding, weariness and sorrow, all forgotten or swallowed up in the breathless admiration which took instant possession of her soul. Around her, crumbled and tumbled in all directions, were hills bare indeed of trees, but green to the very summit, and strangely picturesque in the fantastic variety of their forms. There were quiet glens and solemn, rock-strewn passes, with streamlets swelled into cataracts by the rains of spring, yet looking in the distance like mere threads of liquid silver spirting from their rugged sides. There were long brown tracts of peat land, brightened and relieved by patches of golden, flowering gorse, or of that thin herbage which, in its perfectly emerald green, is only to be seen in such like boggy places; and over and above all this, there were the shadowy outlines of more than one far-off range of mountains melting into the delicate blue background of the sky, and changing color, as rapidly as the young cheek of beauty, beneath the ever-shifting lights and shadows of that "cloud scenery" which is nowhere more beautiful or varied than in Ireland. To the left, and looking, in the clear atmosphere, so close that she almost felt she could have touched it with her outstretched hand, rose "Croagh Patrick," sacred to the memory of Ireland's great apostle; and Clew Bay lay, or seemed to lie, bright and shining at her feet—Clew Bay, with its gracefully winding shore, and its archipelago of islets; some bold, beetling rocks, ready and able to do battle with the storm, others mere baskets of verdure floating on the tide; while the largest and most picturesque of them all, the sea, girt kingdom of Grana-Uaile, Clare Island, stood bravely up, cliff over cliff, at the very mouth of the harbor, guarding it against the winter encroachments of the Atlantic, which, green as liquid jasper, and calm, in that summer weather, as a giant sleeping in the sunshine, unrolled itself beyond. Long and wistfully Nellie fixed her gaze upon that fair prospect; and it was with a strange reluctance and foreboding of future sorrow, that she at last withdrew in order to examine attentively that portion of the country which lay more immediately around her, and with which she believed herself about to be more intimately connected. As she did so, a building, perched half-way up a hill, rather more inland than that upon which she herself was standing, attracted her eye, and she gasped, with a sudden mingling of hope and fear, like a person choking; for she felt a sudden conviction that in the wild, uncultivated lands beneath her she beheld the portion assigned to her grandfather by the commissioners at Loughrea, and in that edifice, which seemed to have been built for the express purpose of commanding and overawing the entire district, the house in which they had told her she was to establish her new home. House, indeed, it could scarcely be called in anything like the modern acceptation of the term, though it was probably perfectly well suited to the wants and wishes of the wild chieftains by whom it had been erected. The original building had consisted of a single tower, of which the rough, rude walls, formed of huge stones, put unhammered and uncemented together, betrayed its origin in times so far remote as to have no history even in the oldest annals of the land. Added on to this gray relic of the past, however, a new building was now evidently in process of erection. It was far from finished yet, as Nellie knew by the poles and scaffoldings around it; but even in its embryo state it bore a terribly suspicious resemblance to that square, simple fortalice type of building which seems to have been the one architectural idea of Cromwell's Irish drafted soldiers, and which still remains in many places, the silent but uncontrovertible witness—the seal which they themselves have set upon their forcible and unjust possession of the land. The very look of that half-finished building seemed an answer to Nellie's late foreboding, and with a sinking heart she turned her back upon it and retraced her steps to the place where she had left Lord Netterville. The old man had already shaken off his fitful slumbers, and was toiling feebly up the hill.

Nellie ran back to fetch her bundle, which he had been unable to bring with him; but overtaking him in an instant, she gave him her arm, led him to the spot from whence she had just been taking her bird's-eye view of the country, and, pointing to the fortalice in process of erection, watched anxiously to discover what sort of impression it would make on his mind. But either he did not observe it, or did not take in the peculiar significance of its presence in those wilds; and finding that he remained silent and apparently unmoved, she collected all her remaining energy to say cheerfully:

"Look at that old gray tower to the right. If the man whom we met this morning among the hills spoke truth, we have reached the end of our weary journey, and yonder is our future home. It is not like our own dear Netterville, indeed, and yet it seems a goodly enough mansion. So goodly," she added, stealing a glance beneath her long lashes to see how he took the insinuation, "that I almost wonder they should have dealt thus kindly by us; for I know that many of the first of the 'transplanted' have had their lots assigned them in places where there was not even the hut of a peasant to shelter them from the weather."

"Tush, child! talk not to me of houses," the old man answered querulously, too much occupied with the actual disadvantages of his position to catch the hidden drift of Nellie's observation. "What boots a goodly mansion, if starvation be at its portal? And what, I pray you, but starvation are they condemned to, who have been sent to make themselves a home among these barren mountains?"

Nellie suffered her eyes to roam once more over the bright waters of the bay, and then, with a quick sense of beauty kindling up in her soul, she turned them hopefully upon Lord Netterville.

"Nay, dear grandfather, it is, after all, a country fair and pleasant to the eye, and once my dear mother rejoins us with the cows and 'garrans,' there can be no lack of plenty, even in these wilds."

"Cows and garrans! And where are we to feed them, girl? Do you expect to find the pleasant grazing-lands of Meath on the tops of these barren hills? or are we to fatten our flocks on the sea-drift, which, I have heard say, the natives of these wilds are in the habit of gathering on the shore and boiling down into food, not for their cattle, (they have none, poor wretches!) but themselves?"

"Some of these hills certainly look black and bare enough, but still I doubt not that among their glens and hollow places we shall find many a good acre of green grass for the grazing of our cattle," the girl answered patiently, and with an evident determination to look, for the present at least, only on the bright side of the question. "And now, dear sir," she added gently, "had we not best move onward? for if yonder tower is really to be our home, the sooner we are there the better."

She glanced toward the castle as she spoke, and the old man saw that she started violently as she did so. She said not another word, however; but he fancied that her cheek grew a shade paler—if that were possible—than it had been before, as she continued to gaze silently in that direction.

"What is it, Nellie?" he cried at last, frightened by her strange looks and silence. "What do you see, child, that you look so white and scared?"

"See!" she answered slowly and reluctantly, "there seems to be a party of many people gathering in the court-yard; the house, therefore, must be inhabited already!"

"People in the court-yard!" cried the old man, now fairly aroused to that same fear which had been haunting Nellie for the last half-hour. "What people, Nellie? Tell me, child, if you can distinguish whether they seem to be natives or strangers to the place. Our fate, alas! may be dependent on that fact."

The girl walked forward, and shading her eyes with her hand from the blinding sunshine, looked again, and yet again, in the direction of the tower.

"Yes," she said at last; "I was not mistaken. There is a party in the court-yard, and some of them are even standing in the gate-way, as if they had but this instant stept forth from the mansion. Surely, grandfather, we cannot have misunderstood or mistaken our instructions? There is no other building to be seen—even in the distance—and this one answers in all respects to the description. The man, too, from whom we inquired our way this morning, assured us that it was called 'The Rath'—the very name set down in our certificate. We cannot have been mistaken, and yet—and yet—if there be persons already in possession, their claim must needs be superior to our own."

She spoke hesitatingly, and in broken sentences, as if she were following out a train of thought in her own mind, rather than addressing her companion. He listened anxiously, and a cloud gathered on his brow as he gradually took in her meaning.

"It may be only some of the natives," he said at last, in a low voice. "The original owners, perhaps, of the tower, who have waited our arrival before giving up possession."

"Owners!" said Nellie quickly. "They told us at Loughrea that the owner had perished in the war, and that therefore we should find it empty."

"They may have been mistaken, Nellie. They know little enough, I think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the land of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I doubt me, of its original possessors."

"And if they are mistaken, we shall take the place of the rightful owners, and so deal out to others the very measure which our enemies have dealt to us. Grandfather, if we are guilty of this thing, we shall have a twofold sin upon our souls—their iniquity and our own."

"What would you have, child?" he answered pettishly; for, truth to say, he had yet quite enough of the Englishman about him, not to be over-particular as to the rights of the native Irish. "What would you have? Did you not know already that, in the acceptation of these lands, we were taking that which it was neither in the Cromwellians' right to give or in ours to receive? And what if an old tumble-down tower be thrown into the bargain? Trust me, Nellie, the business is so black already that, like the face of his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or less of smutch will hardly make it blacker or uglier than it is."

"I never thought of this before," said Nellie sadly; "I thought only—fool that I was, so selfishly intent on my own misfortunes—I thought only of tracts of land left barren for want of inhabitants to till them, and of houses emptied by the fate of war. I never dreamed of men and women and little children turned out of their pleasant homes to make room for us—us who have as little right to their possessions as the English soldiers have to ours!"

"Nevertheless it has been done in almost every other case of transplantation which I have heard of," the old man answered restlessly. "And the iniquity—for it is an iniquity—is theirs who have driven us to such spoliation, not ours who have been compelled in our own despite to do it."

But Nellie was far too noble, and too clear-sighted in her nobleness, to shelter her actions behind such a subterfuge, and she answered vehemently:

"But it must not be in ours, sir—it must not be in ours! We will go down at once, and if the persons whom we see yonder be the rightful owners of that tower, we will merely crave rest and hospitality at their hands, until such a time as we have found a place, however humble, in which, without injury to honor or conscience, we can make ourselves a home."

"As you will, Nellie—as you will," he answered, too weary, perhaps, to be able longer to dispute the point. "But after all, we may be mistaken as to the ownership of these people. Look again, and tell me, if you can, whether they are clad like Englishmen, or in the native weeds?"

"Not in the native weeds, I think, my father. Rather I should say, if it were not impossible, that the men whom I see down yonder belonged to the army of the oppressor. Ha! Now a lady is coming forth, and now they are mounting her, and a tall, stately personage in—yes—certainly in military attire, is mounting also, and takes his place at her side. Now half a dozen servants, I suppose, or friends, are on their horses likewise, and now they are moving forward. Father, they must come this way, there is none other that I can see by which horses can pass with safety. Let us wait for them behind the bank, and then, when they are near enough, we will accost them, and if they be of the conquering army, show them our certificate. They will, of course, bow to its authority, and help us to take possession of that house which the document assigns us. I am glad a woman is among them; it will make it easier, I think, to speak."

As Nellie ran on thus, she drew her grandfather with her behind a bank which dipt down suddenly upon the path, narrowing it until it was all but impassable to riders. There, with pale face and tightened breath, she nervously awaited the advent of the party upon whose favorable or unfavorable disposition toward them she felt her own fate and Lord Netterville's to be so painfully dependent.

To Be Continued.

The Roman Gathering. [Footnote 46]

By W. G. Dix.

[Footnote 46: We give place to the above article in our columns, though from a non-Catholic pen, thinking that it will be read with interest by our readers, while it indicates, at the same time, the religious tendencies which are becoming more and more prevalent among not a small class of minds in our country.—Editor C. W.]

A man of many years, without vast temporal resources, despoiled of a part of his possessions, having many and vigorous enemies about him, and regarded by many even of those who profess the Christian faith as about to fall from his high place in Christendom, such a man invites his brethren of the apostolical ministry throughout the world to honor by their personal presence at Rome the anniversary of the martyrdom, eighteen hundred years ago, of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and to join with him in the exaltation of martyrs who, like them, though in far distant lands, were "faithful unto death." They respond with eager joy and haste to the call, and those who cannot go send on the wings of the wind their words of loving veneration.

To say not a word of the spiritual claims of the man who sent forth the invitation, so eagerly and widely accepted, there is in the fact just stated a glowing evidence that, even in these days of triumphant and insolent materialism, moral power has not entirely lost ascendency. Though millions of knees are bent in honor of the Dagon of materialism, in some one or other of its myriad forms of degrading idolatry, yet millions of hearts also recognize the gift of God as present evermore in his holy church. Never before has the Catholic Church beheld so great a multitude, from so distant places, assembled at her call at the central city of the faith.

The enemies of catholicity have again and again referred to the great inventions of modern times as sure destroyers of the claims of the Catholic Church and of her hold upon her millions of members; but lo! these very inventions are brought into the service of the church. The printing-press, which was going to annihilate the Catholic Church, has proved one of her most effectual bulwarks; millions of printed pages inspire the devotion of her children, and make known her claims to reading men, until many who were even her enemies and revilers, from ignorance and prejudice, acknowledge their error, and make haste to go to "their father's house." Steam, in the view of many, was about so to change the structure of society that the old and decrepid Church of Rome, the great obstacle on the railroad of materialism, was about to be run over and cast to the roadside, a weak and useless wreck; but lo! the power of steam enables hundreds and thousands more to go up to the sacred city, as the tribes of Israel were wont to visit Jerusalem, than could otherwise attend the festivals of the faith in St. Peter's Church. Of the manifold uses of steam, a large proportion is in the service of catholic truth. And then the telegraph; that, surely, was to show an advanced state of civilization which could not tolerate the slow and ancient ways of catholicity; but lo! here, again, the event has contradicted the prophecy; for, by means of the telegraph, the assemblage of the vast host at Rome was known throughout the world on the very day of its occurrence; and almost literally, in all parts of Christendom, thousands of devout worshippers could turn their faces reverently toward the altar of God in Rome at the very instant when those in its immediate presence were bending before it, and could join in the same prayers and anthems, as though the world itself were one vast St. Peter's Church, and the strains of penitence and hymns of joy could reverberate across oceans and mountains, among distant nations and islands of the sea, as among the corridors and arches of one great temple sacred to the triune God.

As in these instances, so in many others, the church has extended her sway and deepened her power by the very forces which many supposed would work her ruin. The history of the church has shown in the domain of natural science, so often applied in the service of infidelity and disorder, as in the field of human passion, that God will make the wrath of man to praise him, and turn weapons designed to attack his holy Church into her consecrated armor of defence. The grace of God so overrules the inventions of man and the powers of nature, that even the terrible lightning becomes the vivid messenger to convey to the ends of the earth the benediction of the Vicar of Christ.

What is the chief lesson of the recent gathering at Rome? It is this, that the church of God, so often, in the view of her enemies, destroyed, will not stay destroyed; that after every "destruction" she renews her invincible youth, and rises to pursue her career of conquest over sin, prejudice, and wrong; that, though she may bend awhile to the storm that beats upon her sacred head, she has never been wholly overcome; that, notwithstanding all that mortal enmity, defection, outrage, have done or can do, she yet lifts her forehead to the sky to be anew baptized with light from the sun of truth above; and, strong in the faith and promise of the Eternal God, she falters not in her endeavors, patient and persistent, to subdue the world to Christ.

The history of the Catholic Church abounds with instances like the Roman gathering in June, which prove that her hours of affliction are those very ones when her faithful children gather to her side, to assure her of their prayers and support, and to discern upon her saintly face those "smiles through tears," which, in times of trial, are the warmest and most touching acknowledgments of filial veneration.

The commemorative assemblage at the capital of Christendom, signifies that the church of God is indestructible by any forces that earth or hell, singly or united, can bring against her. She may be at times like the bird in the snare of the fowler; but she is sure of being released at length, and then she plumes her wings afresh, and soars heavenward, filling the air with the divine, exultant music of her voice. The powerful of the earth have sometimes loaded the church with fetters; but by the strength of Christ that dwells evermore in her, she has broken the bonds asunder, or, by his transforming grace, they have become the wreaths and garlands of new victory, even as the cross of humiliation has become, by the sacrifice of our Lord, the emblem of unfading glory.

The church of Christ, bearing on her brow his holy seal, and in her hands his gifts of power, knelt in sorrow at his grave; but she hailed his resurrection with joy, and was endowed anew with treasures of immortal life. Afterward, the might of heathendom arose against her, and she descended from the wrath of man into the catacombs; but she reascended, to wear upon her brow the diadem of a spiritual empire that shall never fall until the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and even then, true to all her history in deriving new glory from every apparent defeat, she will rise again from the great grave of nature to enjoy for ever the vision of God. Kings of the earth have denied her right to invest the pastors of her children with their due prerogatives, and have even dared her to mortal combat; but though distressed and thwarted, she has never relinquished her inherent rights, and she never will. As many times as the head of the church on earth has been driven from Rome by armed, ungrateful violence, so many times exactly has he been welcomed back with tears of penitence and shouts of rapture.

Despoiled of treasures committed to her care by faithful stewards of God's bounty, she has labored with her own hands to feed her needy children. At one time, persecuted in the wilderness, she has found a refuge and a welcome in the courts of princes; at another, driven from the courts of princes, because she would not deny her Lord or her divine commission, she has found a humble sanctuary in the wilderness, and knelt upon the bare earth to adore the Lord of life and light, once the child in the manger, and to invoke all the saints in glory to plead her cause in the ear of infinite justice and goodness.

She has spurned the anointed king from the temple of God, until he repented of his crime; and on the head of the lowly monk who was spending his days in labor and prayer, she has placed the triple crown. With one hand she has bathed with "baptismal dew" the brow of the day-laborer's child, while the other she has raised in defiance of imperial might, which dared to assail her holy altar.

One of the most violent objections to the Catholic Church has been urged for the very reason that she has so faithfully held the balance between the contending forces of society. She has been accused of favoring the claims of absolutism or popular demands, as the triumph of either at the time would favor her own ends, irrespective of right. The charge is unjust, is urged by many who know better, yet it springs from an honest misapprehension in many minds. It would have been utterly impossible for an institution, designed to enlighten and guide mankind in its higher relations, not to touch human interests of every kind, and human institutions generally in many ways; yet the challenge may safely be given to any thoughtful student of history, to acknowledge with candor, whatever may be his ecclesiastical position, that the Catholic Church, having often been chosen to be, and having an inherent right to be, the umpire between the rights of authority and the rights of individuals, has faithfully labored to sustain lawful authority when assailed by the wild fury of misguided multitudes, and that she has interposed her powerful shield, often with the most triumphant success, to protect men whose rights as men were assailed by authority changed by ambition into arrogant and exacting tyranny. What inconsistency and insincerity have been charged against the Catholic Church for this remarkable and noble fact in her history! In this respect the Catholic Church has followed strictly in the steps of her Divine Author, who, when on earth, invariably upheld the rights of authority, while vehemently denouncing those who unjustly exercised it; and while going about doing good, the friend of the friendless and the helper of the helpless, pleading with divine eloquence, and laboring with divine power for the outcast and the poor, never and nowhere sanctioned the spirit of insurrection, but enjoined obedience as one of the main duties of life. Hence, it has come about, by one of those sublime mysteries, which prove the divine origin of Christianity, that the greatest revolution which has ever taken place in religious belief and in civil society in all their bearings, has been effected by the teachings, by the life and death of one who by no word or deed ever assailed authority itself or incited resistance to it.

Beauty and order being the same thing, and religious truth being the beauty of holiness, Christ, who was truth in person, must have made his church the friend and upholder of all beauty and order; and so it has proved for eighteen hundred years. The church has been the celestial crucible in which whatever of human art or invention had within it the essential attributes of higher and spiritual goodness has been purified and adapted to the service of religion. Has poetry sought to please the imaginations of men? the church of Christ unfolded before her the annals of Christianity, with her grand central sacrifice of infinite love, and all her demonstrations of heroic suffering and courageous faith; and poetry drew holier inspiration from the view, and incited men by higher motives to a higher life. Have painting and sculpture sought to represent objects of refining grace and sublimity? the church of Christ persuaded them to look into the records of the Christian past, and there they found treasures of beauty and splendor, devotion and martyrdom, whose wealth of illustration as examples; incentives, and memorials, art has not exhausted for centuries, and will never exhaust. Christian history is the inexhaustible quarry of whatever is most noble and heroic in man, purified by the grace of God. Has architecture sought to invest stone with the attributes of spiritual and intellectual grace? the church of God has so portrayed before her the sublimities of the Christian faith, that she knelt at her feet in veneration, and thenceforth consecrated herself to build enduring structures, which, the more they show of human power and skill, the more they persuade men to the worship of God. Has eloquence sought to nerve men for the grand conflicts of life? the church of Christ has touched the lips of eloquence with living fire from her altar, until have sprung forth words that flamed with love to man and love to God. Has music sought to weave her entrancing spells around the ear and heart and soul? the church of Christ has breathed into music her own divine being, until the music of the church seems like beatific worship, and worship on earth like beatific music.

As in these respects, so in others, the church has made a holy conquest of whatever is noblest among the endowments of men. In speaking of Catholic history, even from the secular point of view, it may be justly said, that nowhere else has there been such wonderful discernment of the various capacities of the human mind, and of their various adaptations. Tenacious of the truth and of all its prerogatives, the Catholic Church has, nevertheless, allowed a wide liberty of thought. That the Catholic Church has narrowed the understandings of men, is a singular charge to make in the face of the schools of Catholic philosophy, in which men of varying mental structure, training, or habits of thought, have had full, free play of their faculties. And where else have there been so many free and varying activities as in the Catholic Church? The false charge that the church fetters the minds and movements of men, may be traced to the fact that all Catholic diversities of thought have converged, like different rays of light, in the elucidation of truth, and that varying modes of Catholic action have had one object—the advancement of truth.

Here is the intended force of all these illustrations, for they have had a logical purpose. The world will never outgrow the church. All the boasted improvements in science, in art, in civilization, so far from impeding the church of Christ, and making her existence no longer needed, will, at the same time, advance her power, and make her more needed than ever. If in the middle ages, when society was in the process of transition from the old to the new, the church was pre-eminently needed to keep what was just and right and true in the older forms of civilization, and gradually to adapt to them what was just and right and true in the newer developments of society, most truly is the church needed now, when there exists a perfect chaos of opinions, and when a part of the civilized world is in another transition, from the aimless, rudderless vagaries of Protestantism to the solid rock of Catholicity. If ever the voice of authority was needed, like the voice of the angel of God, heard amid and above the howlings of the storm, it is needed now.

Much false reasoning has been uttered about the "unchangeable church," as though, because "unchangeable," it was not adapted to a changing and striving world, when, in truth, for the very reason that the church of Christ is unchangeably true, she is required and adapted for all the changes and emergencies of time. Who ever heard a sailor complain of the mariner's compass, because, on account of its unchangeable obstinacy, it would not conform to his private judgments and caprices about the right course? No one. It is for the very reason that the mariner's compass is unchangeably true to the eternal law of magnetic attraction, under all circumstances and in all places, that it is the unerring guide among the whirlwinds and heavings of the great deep. Catholicity is the mariner's compass upon a greater deep—even that of the wild and rolling, beating ocean of humanity, pointing, amid sunny calms, or gentle winds, or raging gales, unerringly to the cross of Jesus Christ, as the needle of the mariner's compass points to the north—guiding, age after age, the precious freights of immortal souls to the harbor of infinite and unending joy.

The force of this illustration is all the stronger that the mariner's compass is a human adaptation of an immutable law of nature to navigation, while the church of the living God is divine alike in origin and application, and has existed from the beginning, unchangeable, like God himself, yet adapting herself to the wants of every age. The church of God is like his own infinite providence, in which unchangeable truth meets in the harmony of mercy the innumerable changes of human need.

Much has been written and more said about "the church of the future," as though it were to be some millennial manifestation altogether different from the historic church; but the church of the future, which is not also the church of the past and of the present, can be no church; for a true church must reach to the ages back as well as to those before. If the continuity is broken, truth is broken, and cannot be restored. As for eighteen centuries there have been no forms of civil society, no calms or tempests in the moral, political, social, or religious world, in which the Catholic Church has not been true to the organic principles of her divine life, even the enemy of catholicity should admit—that fact being granted—that the presumption is on her side that she will be equally true to those principles during the centuries that are to come. He may deny that the church has been true, and, consequently, that she will be true, but he will not admit one proposition and deny the other; he will admit both or deny both. In other words, he will admit, equally with the friend of catholicity, the identity of the church, past, present, and to come. Now, it will be impossible for a friend or enemy of the Catholic Church, from her beginning to this very day, to point to an hour when she was not a living church; it is, then, probable, that she will continue to be a living church. But where, since the promulgation of Christianity to this time, has existed a body of Christian believers, which, for the quality of continual existence, has so good a right to be called the church of Christ as the Catholic Church? Considering her numbers, extent, and duration, that church has been preeminently the church of the past; considering numbers, extent, and duration, that church is pre-eminently the church of the present; considering all analogies and probabilities, then the Catholic Church will be preeminently the church of the future. In truth, the vindictive anger of the enemies of the Catholic Church, in whatever form of opposition it may be shown, proceeds from the fact, not that she is the dead church of the past, as she is sometimes called, for there would be no reason to war with the dead, but because she is, as she has been and will be, the living church. The Catholic Church is hated not for being too dead, but for being too living. She has seen the birth and death of countless "improvements" of her principles, and she has received with gladness into her fold many an eager and conscientious inquirer for the "new church," who has at length reached an end of his wanderings and a solution of his doubts in finding, with tears of rapturous submission, that the new church, for which he was seeking, is the same church which has stood for ages, ever old, yet ever new, because representing Him who is alike the Living God and the Ancient of Days.

The Catholic Church, so frequently and unjustly denounced as ever behind the age, or even as facing the past, has been foremost in all parts of the world. She has sent her faithful soldiers of the cross where the spirit of commerce dared not go; she was the first in the east and the first in the West; it was her lamp of divine light which dispelled the gloomy terrors of the barbarous north of Europe; it was her sceptre of celestial beauty, which, under the guidance of Heaven, transformed the political and social wreck of southern Europe into order. In what part of the world which man could reach has she not planted the cross? Where on the face of the earth is the mountain whose craggy sides have not, at one time or another, sent back into the sounding air the echoes of Catholic worship?

Daniel Webster gave a vivid picture of the extent of the power of England, in what I think to be the grandest sentence which America has contributed to the common treasure of English literature. He said: "The morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." That grand figure of speech may be applied to the extent of the Catholic Church. Yet it is not by martial airs, but by hymns of praise and penitential orisons and the continuous sacrifice that the Catholic Church daily celebrates, "from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same," the triumphant march of the Prince of Peace. How like "the sound of many waters" rolls hourly heavenward the anthems of catholic worship throughout the world! Not only is every moment of every day consecrated by catholic hymns sung somewhere on earth; but how majestically roll down through eighteen hundred years the unbroken anthems of catholic devotion! Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, night after night, month after month, year after year, century after century, the holy strains go on unending. To the mind's ear seem blended in one almost overpowering flood of holy harmony the unnumbered voices which have sounded from the very hour when the shepherds of Bethlehem heard the angelic song to this very moment, when, somewhere, catholic voices are chanting praise to the Lord and Saviour of men.

And, in this view, how literally has been fulfilled that consoling prophecy, "Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." Wherever the Divine Son has been duly honored, there also she, who was remembered with filial love even amid his dying agonies for a world's salvation, has been remembered and called blessed; called blessed from that lowly home and from that mount of sorrow in the distant east, in millions of lowly homes, and under the shadow of mountains to the farthest west; called blessed by millions of loving and imploring voices through all the ages since; called blessed in all the languages that have been spoken since that time in all the world; called blessed in the rudest forms of human speech and in the most ecstatic music of voice and skill; called blessed by the lips of the little child that can hardly speak the name of mother, and by the lips that tremble with age and sorrow; called blessed by the sailor on the deep, by the ploughman on the land, by the scholar at his books, by the soldier drawing his sword for right upon the battle-field; called blessed by the voices of peasant-girls singing in sunny vineyards, and by the voices of those from whose brows have flashed the gems of royal diadems; called blessed in cottages and palaces, at wayside shrines, and under the golden roofs of grand cathedrals; called blessed in the hour of joy and in the hour of anguish—in the strength and beauty of life, and at the gates of death. How long, how ardently, how faithfully has all this loving honor been paid for so many generations, and will continue to be paid for all generations to come, to that sorrowing yet benignant one, who bore him who bore our woe!

The recent gathering at Rome indicates that there is no demand which civilization can rightfully make of the Christian Church which she will not eagerly, fully, and faithfully meet. The largest assemblage of professed ministers of Christ which this age has known—leaving here out of view the claims of the Catholic Church to an apostolical priesthood—has been held in Rome by the church, so extensively proclaimed and derided as being behind the age. If there is life, deep, full, pervading life anywhere on earth, it is in the Catholic Church and in all her movements. She will continue to draw to herself all the qualities and capacities of life which are in harmony with her spirit; and this accumulated spiritual force will constantly weaken the barriers that divide her from the sympathies of a large part of Christendom, until at length she will be acknowledged by all as the only living and true church of Christ.

"The restoration of the unity of the church" has been the subject of many thoughts, of many words, of earnest and devout prayer, of much and noble effort, and, when understood as referring to the reconciliation of those who have left the Catholic Church, or who are now out of it because their fathers left it, the phrase may pass without objection; but the phrase is greatly objectionable, even to the extent of expressing an untruth, when it is used to convey the idea that the unity of the church has ever been broken. This has not been, and could not be. The church, intended to be one, and to endure until the end of time, could not, in its organic structure, be really broken at any period of its history, without destroying its title as the one church of Christ. Individuals, communities, even nations, as such, have been broken off from it; but the essential church herself has remained one and unbroken through all vicissitudes. The theory that the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the Church of England are equal and co-ordinate branches of the one church of Christ has no foundation as an historical fact, and is as destructive of all true ideas of the unity of the church as the wildest vagaries of Protestantism. Is there on earth an institution which schism, heresy, and political ambition have tried to destroy and have tried in vain? There is; it is the Catholic Church. Is there an institution on earth which, leaving out of regard all its claims, has had the quality of historical continuity for eighteen centuries? There is; it is the Catholic Church.

The charge, if not of bigotry, yet of most unreasonable arrogance, has been more or less directly made against the Catholic Church, because she has not received overtures of reconciliation from enthusiastic and earnest individuals claiming to represent national churches, as cordially as was expected. But how can she accept, or even consider, any such overtures, proceeding as they do from the assumption of equal position and authority, without disowning herself, without denying even those claims and prerogatives, the existence of which alone makes union with her desirable? If there is no institution on earth which has a valid title to be the continuous church of Christ, all efforts will be vain to supply the gap of centuries by an establishment now. A union of churches will not satisfy the design or promise of our Lord, when he founded the unity of his church. If the Christian church has really been broken into pieces, it will be in vain to gather up the fragments; for, on that supposition, the divine principle has long since departed, and the gates of hell have prevailed. Those men of strong Catholic predilections, who, nevertheless, have clung to the theory that the church of Christ has been really broken, and must be repaired by management, will yet thank God from their inmost souls for the immovable firmness with which that theory has been denied at Rome.

The Catholic Church has never condemned a heresy more false or destructive than the proposition that she is herself but one of the divisions of the Christian church, having no authority to speak or to rule in the name of her Lord. To deny that the one church of Christ is now existing, and that she has existed for ages, is to deny not merely a fact in history, but it is to deny the word of our Lord; and to do that, is to deny alike his holiness and his divinity. How can the Catholic Church treat with those who wish to make terms before submitting to her authority, on the basis of a positive untruth? Catholicity is not an inheritance, to be decided among many claimants, no one of whom has any right to be or to be regarded as the sole heir of the homestead; but it is an estate left by the divine Lord of the manor, in charge of the Prince of the Apostles and his successors, on the express injunction that it is to be kept one and undivided, in trust for the benefit of the faithful for all time. The estate has been kept one and undivided, according to the title-deed; the injunction has never been broken; notwithstanding all defections from the household, the homestead of the Christian world remains in the hands of the same faithful succession to which it was committed by our Lord himself. May God grant that all the younger sons who have gone astray, may return with penitential alacrity to their Father's house!

The Catholic Church will not stop in her progress, until she has converted the world to Christ; but she has not denied, and will not deny, her sacred trust and prerogative of catholicity for the sake even of adding whole nations to her fold. Whoever enters her fold must admit by that act her claim to be the one, undivided, indivisible Church of Christ. There can be no "branches of the Catholic Church" which are not directly joined to the root and trunk of catholicity. A severed branch is no branch.

It is not the fault of the Catholic Church that multitudes "who profess and call themselves Christians" are not members of her communion. She affords the very largest liberty for individual or associated action that can be yielded without denying her faith or her commission. The highest poetry and the severest logic may kneel in brotherly harmony at her altar. Gifts and talents the most diverse have been consecrated to her service. The Catholic Church advancing, century after century, under the banner of the cross and dove, to the spiritual conquest of the world! how far more sublime a spectacle it is than that of some parts of Christendom, which are broken into little independent bands of sectarian skirmishers, keeping up a kind of guerrilla warfare against "the world, the flesh, and the devil," and each other.

There are inspiring tokens which show the depth and breadth of the conviction, that the great schism of three centuries ago has proved a terrible mistake. Multitudes outside of the Catholic Church are inquiring with earnest solicitude about the meaning of catholic unity. The main course of intellectual inquiry is, in both hemispheres, respecting the claims of the Catholic Church. There are evident signs that the chaos of Protestantism is about to be broken up, and the wild, and dreary waste to bloom and glow with Catholic beauty and order. God grant that it may be so, and that not only thousands of individuals may know how precious a prize it is to kneel devoutly and sincerely before, the altar of God; but that even, mighty nations may be convinced, what priceless gifts they have forfeited by three centuries of separation from the source of all they have that has been or is worth keeping.

In view of the fact that the revival of catholic feeling enkindles also the enmity of those who scan it, the gathering at Rome is not only an assurance before the world that the Catholic Church will continue to be the guide of life and the empire of civilization, but it is also a sublime challenge against all the agencies of every kind that have been, or may be tried, to eliminate Catholicity from the age. The Catholic Church has a work to do, and she will do it. She can no more forego it, than she can die by her own will. She has never flinched yet; she never will. It is the very necessity as well as the reason of her being that she shall fulfil her charge without wavering or diminution; and this she will do. If the "gates of hell" cannot prevail against the church of God, she may safely defy all mortal might. The sun might more easily have refused to come forth at the bidding of the Creator, than the church can refuse to do his will in conquering the world for Christ. God speed the day when the divisions of Christendom shall end; when all who profess to be the disciples of Jesus Christ shall seek and find consolation in his one, true, enduring fold; and when the sceptre of God, manifest in the church, shall be extended in benignant power over an obedient and rejoicing world.

"The United Churches Of England And Ireland, In Ireland." [Footnote 47]

[Footnote 47: Ireland and her Churches. By James Godkin. London, Chapman & Hall. 1867. 1 vol. pp. 623.]

It is well to be accurate in the bestowal of titles, and we give, therefore, the institution whose latest history lies before us the exact definition by which, these sixty years past, it rejoices to be known. Under this designation of its own choice this institution is open to the reflection of being one of the most modern of all the churches pretending to be national; the junior of even our own American Episcopal Church, which is not itself very far stricken in years; the junior, indeed, of all the other churches we can at this moment recall to memory, unless we were to include "the Church of the Latter-Day Saints," whose Mecca stands upon Salt Lake.

On the first day of January, in the first year of this century, the ecclesiastical system, establishment, or organization which designates itself as "the United Church of England and Ireland, in Ireland," came, with sound of many trumpets, into the world. On that auspicious day, the legislative union of Ireland and Great Britain was proclaimed; a new national flag, "the Union Jack," was run up from the royal towers of London, Dublin, and Edinburgh; a new royal title was assumed for the coinage of the new realm, and in all great public transactions; a new "great seal" was struck for the sovereign of the newly modelled state; new peers and new commoners were added to the two houses of Parliament, and, to complete the revolution, by the 5th clause of the same act, the matters previously mentioned having been first disposed of, this new church was, on that same day and hour, by the same authority, called into existence. His majesty's proclamation, announced at Paul's Cross in London, at the Cross in Edinburgh, and where the Cross of le Dame street ought to have been, in Dublin, that "the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England."

The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion, as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty equally divided between the two great political parties. But the most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the Protestantism of Saint Patrick—his independence of Rome more especially—was the favorite argument of its defenders.

No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in order to make some show of historical connection with the first founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in "the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.

The history of the Irish member of this curious ecclesiastical firm may best be traced through the statutes at large. As its parentage was parliamentary, so its life has been legislative. There is one advantage in having this description of authority to refer to, that it cannot be disputed. The "Journals of Parliament" in England and Ireland, from the reformation to the civil emancipation of the Catholics in 1829, are good Protestant authority. The peers and commoners of the old religion were excluded from the English houses, from the 10th of Elizabeth (1567) to the 9th of George IV., (1829,) a period of 262 years; and in Ireland, the last parliament in which Catholics sat was that of 4th James II., (1689,) followed by a period of exclusion, before the union, of 111 years. It was not found possible, so early as the time of the two first Stuarts and Elizabeth, to wholly exclude Catholics, or, as they were then called, "recusants," from membership in either house in Ireland; and accordingly we find them a formidable minority in those rarely occurring assemblies, such as the Irish parliaments held in the 11th and 25th of Elizabeth, the 11th James I., the 14th Charles I., and the 12th of Charles II, In the second James's short-lived parliament of one session, hastily adjourned to allow his lords and gentlemen to follow their master to the banks of the "ill-fated river," they were a majority; but with that evanescent exception, the statutes of Ireland are quite as exclusively Protestant authority on all church matters as those of England previous to the union of the legislatures and the churches, and subsequently down to 1829.

The history of Protestantism in Ireland, from first to last, is a political history. Its best record is to be found in the parliamentary journals as well in the reign of Henry VIII. as of George III. And though we do not propose to dwell, in the present paper, in anything like detail on the annals of that establishment previous to the present century, we must condense into a short space the main facts of its first appearance on the scene, and its early parliamentary nurture and education, to account for the facility with which it ceased to be, even in pretence, a national church at the time of the legislative union. Political in its origin, its organization, and its government, from the first hour of its existence, it had neither will, nor wish, nor ability, if it had either, to resist the designs of the state, which included its incorporation into the imperial system. As the lay representation of Ireland was recast, as the seal and the standard were changed, so the institution started by statute and royal orders in council in the sixteenth century came naturally to have its individuality extinguished by other statutes and orders in council in the nineteenth. If this so-called "Church of Ireland" had really believed itself to be what its champions had so often asserted, the true and ancient national church of the kingdom, it would at all events have made some show of patriotic resistance before making its surrender.

Not only, however, was it not really national in its origin, but it was then, and always, an eminently anti-popular institution. There was not, as in other countries during the reformation, even the pretext of what is called a popular "movement against Rome." No Luther had arisen among the Celtic or the Anglo-Irish Catholics in that age of perturbation. The ancient faith was received as implicitly by the burgesses of Dublin as by the clansmen of Connaught, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope seemed a doctrine as impossible of contradiction to the descendants of Strongbow as to the children of Milesius. No internal revolt against Roman discipline or Roman doctrine had shown itself within the western island. There was no spiritual insurrection attempted from within to justify the resort to external intervention. The annalists of Donegal, who are commonly called "The Four Masters," and who were old enough to remember the first mention of Protestantism in their own province, thus unconsciously express the amazement of the educated Irish mind of those days at the new doctors and doctrines:

"A.D. 1537. A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so that the people of England went into opposition to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they followed a variety of opinions, and the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish people, and they gave the title of Head of the Church of God to the king. There were enacted by the king and council new laws and statutes after their own will."

But the laws and statutes enacted by the king and council in England, for changing the national religion, were not immediately either extended to, or proposed for imitation in, Ireland. The zeal of the crowned apostle was tempered by the exigencies of the politician. Before this king's time, the English power in Ireland had been essentially a colonial power; "a pale" or enclosure, or garrison. Whoever will not mark the point, will miss the very pivot of all the operations of the new religion in Ireland. Henry VIII. had inherited from his father, the first king of united England for a century, the ambition of making himself equally master of the neighboring nation. During the twenty years of the sway of his great cardinal-chancellor, this object never was for a moment lost sight of. When Wolsey went down to the grave in disgrace without seeing it fulfilled, his royal pupil continued to prosecute the plan to its entire accomplishment. This result, however, he only reached in the thirty-second year of his reign, (1541,) some six years before his miserable end. Ten years previously, (1531,) he may be said to have established the new religion in England by compelling the majority of the clergy to subscribe to his supremacy in spirituals; within two years followed his marriage with Anne Boleyn; and in 1535, his order appeared commanding the omission "of the name of the Bishop of Rome from every liturgical book," which may be said to have completed the severance of England from Rome.

Not only did not Henry, in obedience to his political design of adding another crown to his dominions, not press his reformed doctrines immediately upon the Irish of either race, but he expressly reprehended his deputies at Dublin for having prematurely attempted the national conversion. In the same year in which he struck the pope's name from every liturgical book, he sharply rebuked George Browne, an English ex-Augustinian whom he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, for destroying certain relics of saints in the churches of that city. Again in the same year. Secretary Cromwell writes officially to contradict "a common rumor," that he intended to pluck down the statue of "our Lady of Trim," which was as famous on the west, as our "Lady of Walsingham" on the east of the channel. Four years later, we find the Lord Deputy Grey, after a victory over O'Neill at Bellahoe, halting with the whole court and army at this celebrated place of pilgrimage, and visiting this same shrine of our Lady—"very devoutly kneeling before her, he heard three or four masses." At that moment, in the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., and the sixth of his open rupture with Rome, any Celtic-Irish or Anglo-Irish Catholic, in the ranks of Lord Grey, not particularly well informed as to the affairs of the neighboring kingdom, might have rested honestly in the belief that he was serving a Catholic prince in full communion with the rest of Christendom.

But as soon as the election to the kingship, which it is not in our way here to dwell upon, was successfully over, and the new royal title proclaimed, confirmed, and acknowledged abroad, especially in Scotland and France, and by the emperor, then there came a change. The politician being satisfied, the apostle awoke. A commission of reformation, at the head of which sat Archbishop Browne, undertook the purgation of the Dublin and neighboring churches, producing as their warrant the royal authority, "dated years before." A sufficient guard of horse and foot accompanied these commissioners, and were much needed to protect them from the populace. The statues and relics in the cathedrals of Leighlin, Ferns, and Kildare; the Lady statue at Trim, and a famous crucifixion in Ballyhogan Abbey, were forthwith destroyed. So far and so soon as they could venture into the interior, this "work, of reformation," under the royal warrant, was pushed on vigorously, in order, as Henry's commission expressed it, "that no fooleries of this kind might henceforth for ever be in use in said land." This royal order (1539) sounded the key-note of spoliation, and little more than this was attempted during the remainder of this reign. The first serious effort at national conversion was made under the orders in council of the 4th of Edward VI., (1551,) when on Easter day the English liturgy was for the first time publicly recited in Christ Church Cathedral, the ex-Augustinian archbishop preaching from the text, "Open mine eyes, that I may see the wonders of the laws," (Ps. 119.) The liturgy was printed the same year at Dublin, in English, and the lord deputy was instructed to take measures to have it "translated into Irish in those places that need it." The following year the work of spoliation was resumed with new vigor at the famous seven churches of Clonmacnoise, and other points upon the Shannon. Within twelve months thereafter, young Edward died, and the five years' reign of Queen Mary gave a respite to the Irish church. It was a period too short for restoration, but long remembered with regretful affection for the temporary exemption from persecution it had afforded.

Anti-national and anti-popular in its conception, the reformation presented itself in Ireland as the enemy at once of the useful and all the fine arts; of all that amused and ennobled and entertained the people. Among both races, war was a business, and the layman's hand was always within reach of his weapon. The arts of peace—agriculture, architecture, botany, medicine, music, were all inmates of the convent and the monastery. The civil glories and treasures of the country were hoarded up where alone they could be secured, in the chancel and the cloister. It was, however, the first duty of the new reformers to strike down and demolish these venerated remains of the piety of former generations. Pictures brought from abroad, or the work of native artists, were defaced; stained windows were brutally broken; shrines smashed; beautiful missals thrown into the fire; croziers broken to bits; chalices and ciboriums melted into bullion; bells blessed to the offices of peace and forgiveness melted down to be cast into ordnance; and all the endearing, civilizing, and solemn associations interwoven from childhood with these consecrated objects of art, were rudely torn out of the bleeding hearts of the people. In the six remaining years of Henry, and the six of Edward VI., nearly six hundred religious houses were thus stripped, desecrated, and dismantled. "They sold their roofs and bells," say the Four Masters, in the annal already quoted, "so there was not a monastery left from the Arran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea, which was not broken and shattered, except a few only" in the remoter corners of the kingdom. Of the regular religious orders then established in that small kingdom, the rule of St. Augustine was followed by 256 houses, male and female; that of St. Bernard by 44; of St. Francis by 114; of St. Dominick by 41; of St. Benedict by 14; of Mount Carmel by 29. Besides these, it is a pathetic and instructive circumstance to remember, that there were then, even in that far western island, not less than 22 houses of Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, vowed to the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre, and 14 of the Trinitarian Order for the redemption of Christian captives from African slavery. All these, with their interior furniture and external possessions, were with ruthless hand transferred to the new clergy, or converted to worldly purposes, in order to prepare the way of the new religion as set forth by the king's order.

It is but fair to point out, that the preachers of this religious revolution were only in part, though in a very considerable part, the receivers of the spoils. A new aristocracy arose on the ruins of the monasteries and churches. Some Irish houses may claim to have ancestors who came in with Strongbow; but many more founders of families came in penniless adventurers at the reformation. The Bagnals and Chichesters, in the north; the St. Legers, Boyles, and Kings in the south; and the Burkes and Croftons in the west, were formerly, and some of their descendants still are, the largest inheritors of ecclesiastical plunder. The chartered minorities of townsmen, whose consciences consented to take the oath of supremacy, were not without their recompense even in this world. The neighboring church and convent property was frequently assigned to these corporators, no matter how few in number, for the use indeed of the corporation; but as they generally contrived to become in their individual capacity tenants under themselves as a corporation, there was at least one description of occupants in the country, who held their lands on easy conditions. These corporate bodies, which continued exclusively Protestant down to the passage of the Irish Municipal Reform Bill in 1834, were often reduced to a ludicrously small number; but even in such Catholic cities as Limerick, Cashel, Clonmel, and Waterford and Drogheda, they continued to possess and dispose of, and often to alienate, the former endowments of pious chiefs and barons to the suppressed convents and colleges of the vicinity.

The new proprietory and clerical interests thus created at the expense of the confiscated church, were placed in a position to require the constant protection and superintendence of the creative power. And this again required, most unhappily both for church and state in that country, the continuous proscription and suppression of those who represented the important interests so dispossessed and disinherited. From thence arose the deadly feud between law and nature, which has disfigured and degraded humanity in Ireland; which has so effectually separated the very ideas of law and justice in the modern Irishman's mind that his first presumption in all conflicting cases is (to his own loss frequently) against the law, rather than in its favor. The body of legislation of which we speak had long ago swelled to the dimensions of a code, and since the early years of George III. has been known exclusively by the name of The Penal Code. The principal collections of this code are by Sir Henry Parnell, (afterward Lord Congleton,) Mr. Bedford, an English barrister, Mr. Mathew O'Conor, of the Irish bar, and the late indefatigable Dr. R. R. Madden. The commentators on the code, from Edmund Burke to Bishop Doyle, or rather the advocates for its amelioration in the first place, and afterward for its total repeal, included almost every name distinguished for liberality in the British annals of the last hundred years.

The first of these proscriptive enactments dates from the 2d year of Elizabeth, when a parliament representing ten counties was held at Dublin. By this assembly the acts enforcing uniformity of worship, and the queen's supremacy in spirituals as well as temporals, are said to have been passed; though others say this parliament adjourned without regularly adopting those measures. In the 3d year of the same reign a further act is found on the Irish Statute-Book, obliging, under forfeiture of office and civil disfranchisement for life, "ecclesiastical persons and officers, judges, justices, mayors, temporal officers, and every other person who hath the queen's wages, to take the oath of supremacy." Commissioners of ecclesiastical causes were created by an act of the same session, "to adjudge heresy" according to the canonical scriptures, the first four general councils, and the laws of parliament. By this commission, five years later, (1564,) the English Book of Articles was declared of full force in Ireland. These articles were twelve in number.

"1. The Trinity in Unity;
2. The Sufficiency of the Scriptures to Salvation;
3. The Orthodoxy of Particular Churches;
4. The Necessity of Holy Orders;
5. The Queen's Supremacy;
6. Denial of the Pope's authority 'to be more than other Bishops have;'
7. The Conformity of the Book of Common Prayer to the Scriptures;
8. The Ministration of Baptism does not depend on the Ceremonial;
9. Condemns 'Private Masses,' and denies that the Mass can be a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Dead;
10. Asserts the Propriety of Communion in Both Kinds;
11. Utterly disallows Images, Relics, and Pilgrimages;
12. Requires a General Subscription to the foregoing Articles."

The subsequent legislation of Elizabeth in Ireland was chiefly political, if we except (in the 11th and 12th of her reign) the act respecting vacant benefices, and the act establishing [Protestant] free schools.

Parliaments in those days assembled at long and uncertain intervals. The only one held during the first James's reign in Ireland—twenty-seven years after Elizabeth's last, and twenty-one before Charles I. convened another—was purely political. This parliament was opened and managed by the Lord Deputy, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose avowed and almost only object in using such an agency was to make his royal master "as absolute as any king in Christendom." Four years later, (1639) was held the second and last Irish parliament of this reign, and simultaneously, (at the instance, and under the advice of Laud), the able, iron-nerved, and most unscrupulous deputy summoned a convocation of the bishops and clergy of the established religion, which forms a very curious picture of the state of that establishment at the end of the first century of the reformation. Strafford himself shall be our authority at this point, and as abbreviated in Mr. Godkin's book, pp. 64 and 65.

"He had ordered a convocation of the clergy to meet simultaneously with the parliament for the purpose of adopting the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, so that the Irish articles might become a dead letter. The convocation went to work conscientiously, digesting the canons, etc., to the best of their judgment; but Wentworth found that they were not doing what he wanted, and resolved to bring them to their senses. In a letter to Laud he chuckled over his victory, apparently quite unconscious that he had been playing the tyrant, circa sacra, in a style worthy of Henry VIII. Having learned what the committee of convocation had done, he instantly sent for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring him to bring the Book of Canons noted in the margin, together with the draught he was to present that afternoon to the house. This order he obeyed; 'but,' says the lord deputy, 'when I came to open the book, and run over the deliberandums in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam, that I was ashamed and scandalized with it above measure.' He gave the dean imperative orders not to report anything until he heard from him again. He also issued orders to the primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe, and Derry, together with Dean Leslie, the prolucutor, and the whole committee, to wait upon him next morning. He then publicly rebuked them for acting so unlike churchmen; told them that a few petty clerks had presumed to make articles of faith, without the privity or consent of state or bishop, as if they purposed at once 'to take away all government and order forth of the church. But those heady and arrogant courses he would not endure, nor would he suffer them either to be mad in the convocation nor in their pulpits.' He next gave them strict injunctions as to what the convocation should do. They were to say content, or not content, to the Articles of England, for he would not endure that they should be disputed. He ordered the primate to frame a canon on the subject; but it did not meet his approval, and so the lord deputy framed one himself, whereupon his grace came to him instantly and said he feared the canon would never pass in such a form as his lordship had made, but he was hopeful it might pass as he had drawn it himself. He therefore besought the lord deputy to think a little better of it. The sequel is best told in Strafford's own vigorous language—'But I confess, having taken a little jealousy that his proceedings were not open and free to those ends I had my eye upon, it was too late now either to persuade or to affright me. I told his lordship I was resolved to put it to them in those very words, and was most confident there were not six in the house that would refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we should see whether his lordship or myself better understood their minds in that point, and by that I would be content to be judged, only for order's sake I desired his lordship would vote this canon first in the upper house of convocation, and so voted, then to pass the question beneath also.' He adds that he enclosed the canon [Footnote 48] to Dean Leslie, 'which, accordingly, that afternoon was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply did deliberate upon the receiving of the Articles of England.'"

[Footnote 48: The first Irish canon.]

We pause and draw a hard breath, after this dictatorial description of how to rule a church and have a church, to observe that the Irish Protestant prelates of those days were no mean men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry, and Bedell of Kilmore, and the primate so hectored and overawed by this Cavalier-Cromwell was no less a personage than James Usher. But being as they were, as they well knew they were, the creatures of the state, what could they do when brought into conflict with the author and finisher of their law?

Omitting the period of the civil wars and the Cromwellian Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving study apart, we pass to the first parliament of Charles II., (1662,) in which one of the first contributions to the statutes which we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of uniformity. In the same session was passed the acts of settlement and explanation, which have been called "the Magna Charta of Irish Protestantism." These acts confirmed to their Puritan possessors the properties of the Catholic gentry confiscated by Cromwell for their attachment to both Charleses, and extending into almost every county. Of 6000 proprietors, so confiscated, but 60—one per cent—were restored, in part or whole, to their hereditary estates.

Thirty years later, after William's victory over James II., 4000 remaining Catholic proprietors were subjected to a similar proscription—so that in that half-century 10,000 owners of estates forfeited them for their fidelity to their ancient, and their hostility to what Mr. Froude correctly calls "the intrusive religion."

No parliament sat again in Ireland, till that short one of a single session before mentioned, (the 4th James II.,) summoned in 1689. This parliament repealed the acts of settlement and explanation, Poyning's law, and other coercive and intolerant statutes; but the issue of battle went against King James, and the two succeeding reigns became fruitful beyond precedent of penal legislation. Although the 9th of the "Articles of Limerick"—at the close of the war—had simply imposed one unobjectionable sentence as an oath of allegiance on the defeated party, the act (2d and 3d William and Mary) prescribed an elaborate form of abjuration of the doctrines of transubstantiation and of the invocation of saints, and declaring the holy sacrifice of the Mass "superstitious and idolatrous."' The oath of abjuration concluded by the denial to any foreign prince or prelate (namely, the pope) of "any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within the realm." There never was a more shameful breach of public faith than this statute. The treaty of Limerick had simply prescribed this form of oath for the restoration to their former status of all who chose to take it: "I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William and Queen Mary; so help me God."

And the 10th article of the same treaty had provided: "The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government, shall be the oath aforesaid and no other." Yet within the same twelvemonths in which William's generals and lord-justices signed this latter compact, the new penal law was passed, and the new oath of abjuration was imposed. In 1691, the tolerant treaty was signed; in 1692, when the few Catholic peers and commoners who ventured to present themselves appeared to be sworn in of the new Irish parliament, they were met by this infamous oath of abjuration, driven out and disqualified. Above a million of their broad acres were forfeited, as a further penalty on those who refused the oath, and we need not be surprised to find, at King William's death, (1702,) that but "one sixth part" of the property of the kingdom remained in Catholic hands.

The 7th and 8th William and Mary re-enacted, with additions, the Elizabethan penal laws. Of these additions the principal were:

1. Authorizing the Protestant chancellor to name guardians for Catholic minors.
2. Act to prevent recusants (Catholics) from becoming tutors in private families, unless by license of the Protestant ordinaries of their several dioceses.
3. An act to prevent Roman Catholics acting as guardians to minor children.
4. An act to disarm Roman Catholics.
5. An act for the banishment of popish priests and prelates.

During the reign of Queen Anne, however, the code received its last finishing contributions. In the 1st and 2d of this queen was passed "the act for discouraging the further growth of popery," of which the following were the principal provisions:

"The third clause provides that if the son of an estated Papist shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will. The fourth clause prohibits a Papist from being the guardian of his own child; and orders that, if at any time the child, though ever so young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its own father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts that, if a Papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than one third of the amount of the rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between all his children. The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause vests in her majesty all advowsons possessed by Papists.

"A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides that the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit. The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform. The sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant to a Protestant master. The eighteenth gives a salary of £30 per annum to Popish priests who shall conform. The twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale: For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, £50; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman not registered, £20, and for discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, £10. The twenty-first clause empowers two justices to summon before them any Papist over eighteen years of age, and interrogate him when and where he last heard Mass said, and the names of the persons present, and likewise touching the residence of any Popish priest or schoolmaster; and if he refuses to give testimony, subjects him to a fine of £20, or imprisonment for twelve months.

"Several other penal laws were enacted by the same parliament, of which we can only notice one; it excludes Catholics from the office of sheriff, and from grand juries, and enacts that, in trials upon any statute for strengthening the Protestant interest, the plaintiff might challenge a juror for being a Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow."—McGee's Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 605, 608.

We may here turn from this repulsive record of tyrannous legislation to inquire into the consequences of it all at the end of the second, and once again at the end of the third century, from the reformation.

George II. came to the throne in 1727, and bequeathed it to his successor in 1760. This generation saw, therefore, the close of the second century of the great Protestant experiment; and if a centennial celebration had been proposed to them in 1751, the report of progress made must have included the following principal facts.

"We have dispossessed the Catholic proprietors of five sixths of their property during this last century; we have excluded them from the bench, the bar, and parliament; we have prohibited them being guardians or teachers of youth; we have disfranchised and disarmed their whole body, even their nobles and gentry; yet as far as the people are concerned, we labor in vain. There has been lately (1747) a census of the kingdom, and out of 4,300,000 inhabitants, 3,500,000 are returned as papists. Even in Ulster they are not supplanted; in Leinster they are three to one; in Munster, seven to one; in Connaught, twelve to one. Without property, with few priests, and scarce any bishops, still doth this perverse generation increase and multiply. What can we do with them more than we have done to convince and convert them?" To this searching question some observer more profound than the others seems to have replied, "Try education!"

The third centennial celebration of the introduction of the English liturgy into Ireland—the 51st year of the union of the two national churches—would have afforded an excellent opportunity of taking stock, humanly speaking, of the progress made in a hundred years. But no one thought of suggesting an appropriate celebration of the great event, and so, unhappily, the precious opportunity has been lost. We shall endeavor, however, to supply the want of such a comprehensive retrospect; and here, for the first time, we find the facts and figures of Mr. Godkin's book of considerable service to the subject. From the House of Commons debates of the year 1834, Mr. Godkin gives the following sketch of the arguments and illustrations used in support of "the Church Temporalities Act:"

"Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy. Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church Establishment—that it should be founded upon utility, that it should communicate religious knowledge to the masses of the people, that it should not be debased into a state engine or an instrument of political power—they demanded whether the Church of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of an establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in Ireland? In the course of something more than a century it was stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now amounted to £800,000 a year. Had its efficiency increased in the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own small flock within the fold? On the contrary, they adduced statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers. For example. Lord John Russell said, 'By Tighe's History of Kilkenny, it appears that the number of Protestant families in 1731 was 1055, but in 1800 they had been reduced to 941. The total number of Protestants at the former period was 5238, while the population of the county, which in 1800 was 108,000, in 1731 was only 42,108 souls. From Stuart's History of Armagh, we find that sixty years ago the Protestants in that country were as two to one; now they are as one to three. In 1733, the Roman Catholics in Kerry were twelve to one Protestant, and now the former are much more numerous than even that proportion. In Tullamore, in 1731, there were 64 Protestants to 613 Roman Catholics; but according to Mason's parochial survey, in 1818 the Protestants had diminished to only five, while the Roman Catholics had augmented to 2455. On the whole, from the best computation he had seen—and he believed it was not exaggerated one way or the other—the entire number of Protestants belonging to the Established Church in Ireland can hardly be stated higher than 750,000; and of those 400,000 are resident in the ecclesiastical province of Armagh.'"—pp. 153.

Now, for the maintenance of this church of 700,000 out of a population of 7,000,000—this church of a tenth of the people—there were then and now are held in mortmain of the best lands of the kingdom, above 600,000 acres. We are told by the poet:

"A time there was ere England's woes began
When every rood of ground sustained its man."

The Irish soil is not so nutritious; still, even there, every acre stands for a soul saved or to be saved, according to "the doctrine and discipline" of the united church. In addition to the lands and their revenues, there are also certain supplementary parliamentary grants not to be despised even by light and worldly-minded persons. Mr. Godkin enumerates, in his introduction, several of these:

"It may be desirable to add some more precise information on that subject. There was a return made to Parliament, dated 24th July, 1803, and signed by the then Chief Secretary, Mr. Wickham, who certified that it was made up from the best materials in the chief secretary's office, and believed to be nearly accurate. From this return it appears that the number of parishes in Ireland then was 2436; of benefices, 1120; of churches, 1001; and of glebe-houses, 355. This represents the state of the establishment in the year 1791.

"From 1791 to 1803 the Board of First Fruits granted the sum of £500, in 88 cases, for the building of churches, making a total of £44,000. During the same period the Board granted £100 each for 116 glebe-houses, making a total of £11,600.

"From a parliamentary return, ordered in 1826, it appears that within the present century the following amounts have been voted by parliament up to that date: Gifts for building churches, £224,946; loans for building churches, £286,572; total, £511,538, for building churches in twenty-five years.

"During the same period gifts were made for glebes, £61,484; gifts for building glebe-houses, £144,734. Loans were granted for the same purpose amounting to £222,291, making a total for glebes and glebe-houses of £428,509. Thus, between the year 1791 and 1826 the Establishment obtained for churches and glebes the sum of £940,047. The number of glebe-houses in 1826 was increased to 771, and of benefices to 1396. The number of cures with non-residence was 286." [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: The following additional figures (from the Union to the year 1844) are given on page 96:
For building churches,— £625,371
For building glebe houses,— 336,889
For Protestant charity schools,— 1,105,588
For the Society for Discountenancing Vice, etc.— 101,991]

And, on the other hand, the celebrants of the third centenary, if they had thought of holding one, would have learned from Mr. Godkin (himself a resolute Protestant of the Unitarian school, and an ex-reverend) of the alarming increase of popery of late days even in the very capital of English authority.

"Indeed, the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this city is astonishing, and has no parallel perhaps in any country in Europe. In 1820, there were in Dublin only ten parochial chapels, most of them of an humble character and occupying obscure positions. There were at the same time seven convents or 'friaries,' as they were then called, and ten nunneries, which Mr. Wright described as 'religious asylums where the females of the Roman Catholic religion find shelter when deprived of the protection of their relatives by the hand of Providence.' [Footnote 50] Now the loveliest daughters of some of the most respectable and the best connected Roman Catholic families leave their happy homes and take the veil, sometimes bringing with them ample fortunes—devoting themselves to the work of education and the relief of the poor as 'Sisters of Mercy,' 'Sisters of Charity,' etc.

[Footnote 50: Wright's Dublin, p. 174.]

"There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy is 287, and of regulars 125; total priests, 412. The number of nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic University, with its ample staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools, without including those which are under the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have 7000 pupils under their instruction, while the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000. Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially—the Mater Misericordiae—has been not inappropriately called 'the Palace of the Sick Poor'—numerous orphanages, several widows' houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged and industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence within half a century."—p. 94.

Such is the latest presentation of facts in relation to "Ireland and her churches." Of Mr. Godkin's book (we don't know whether or not he is still called Reverend) we can only say that it is very fairly intended, and shows great industry in the accumulation of materials. From some statements in the historical introduction we most decidedly demur; but the valuable collection of facts in the second part, under the head "Inspection of Bishoprics," and the manifest desire to do, and to inculcate the doing of, justice to men of all churches, throughout the whole book, must bring in every true friend of Ireland the author's debtor.

Love's Burden.

"My burden is light"

The Disciple.

"Dear Lord, how canst thou say
'Tis light,
When I behold thee on the way
To Calvary's height,
Fainting and falling 'neath its heavy weight?
Ah! no. For me thy burden is too great."

The Master.

"Good child, thou dost mistake
The burden I would have thee take.
The cruel load
That crushed me down on Calvary's road
Was thine,
Not mine.
What lighter burden can there be
Than that which Love would lay on thee?"

The Disciple.

"Kind Lord, how foolish is my speech!
I mark the truth which thou wouldst teach
To my cold heart.
Love all the burden bears of others' woes,
Beyond its might;
But of its own on them it would impose
Only a part,
And makes that light."

Florence Athern's Trial.

The farm-house occupied by the Lees, Henry and Margaret, was an old-fashioned, plain brick building. It stood at right angles to a country road which formed a short cut from the turnpike (leading from the city of C—— to Hamilton, the county-town of Butler county, Ohio) to the mills down on the Miami, passing through Mr. Lee's property and by his garden-gate. The house was some fifteen or twenty feet back from the road, and built one room deep three sides, with an old-fashioned garret across the whole of the main building. A wide brick pavement ran from the gate opening into the road past the front of the house to another gate opening into a private lane, leading from the barn and stables, a hundred yards or so back of the house, to a creek some distance in front, which had been dammed up to afford a convenient watering-place for the farm cattle; another brick pavement, not quite so wide, encircled the rear and sides of the house. A broad gravel walk led from the back hall-door to a gate, which, with a hedge, separated the grassy yard from the vegetable-garden, up through that to the barn; another path led from the front-door down between broad grass-plats of grass, studded with evergreens and fruit-trees, over a rustic bridge that spanned a deep ravine, to some stone steps leading down to a spring, which, with the space around and the hill behind, was paved with stone, beneath which the water ran a few feet, then spread out into a creek fringed with willows. On the right of the path from the bridge to some distance behind the spring was a cherry orchard; on the left an open knoll bordered with flower-beds and shrubbery, and occupied in the centre by a rustic summer-house.

In front of the farm-house on the edge of the grass-plats was a row of locust-trees. The parlor was at the end of the house toward the road and to the right of the hall; to the left of that was the dining-room; and on the left of that again the kitchen, not fronting evenly with the rest, but leaving space for a porch running to the end of the house, into the end of which a door opened from the dining-room.

It was Christmas eve, 18—. A lovely, clear moonlight night, rendered brighter by six or eight inches of snow that had fallen the day before, and now lay glistening like diamond-dust in the rays of the full moon. No sound disturbed the silence save the occasional crackling of a branch or twig among the trees, and one or two passers-by on horse-back or in wagon, trudging merrily homeward; for though the railroad had long since made a much shorter route from the city to the mills and Hamilton, Mr. Lee had not retracted the permit to pass through his farm, and the road still remained open.

The parlor windows gave out a brilliant light from the candles burning on the mantle-piece and the Christmas tree, that blazed between them and the wood fire on the old-fashioned hearth. A group was seated round it. Harry Lee, with just a shade of care on his joyous face and a few threads of silver through his thick brown hair, sat opposite the front windows at one side of the hearth; at his side, with her arm resting on his knee, seated on a low ottoman, was a young girl, his niece, Florence Athern; from the lamp on the table a little behind her the soft light fell on the masses of golden hair that covered her well-shaped head, and on the pages of a richly illustrated book, the leaves of which were held open by a hand perfect in its size, shape, and texture; and her face, as she raised it from time to time, in answer to a caressing nod or motion of her uncle, was very lovely, with a tinge of sadness in the light of the soft blue eyes and the curve of the sensitive lips. Opposite these two sat Margaret Lee. Younger than her brother, but old before her time, her sad face was still interesting, though it could not be called handsome. At her side was a younger sister, whose whole attention was given to the three children seated on the floor in the space before the fire, eagerly examining the gifts just taken from the Christmas-trees. Her husband sat on the other side of the table, on which was the lamp, looking over a book of engravings, and trying, from time to time, to restrain the uproar made by the juvenile group. Watching the children while her hands were full of gifts that had fallen to her share, stood an old colored woman, short and fat, and dressed in a neat black dress, while on her head she wore a false front of crinkled black hair and a black lace cap. Her kind old face beamed with enjoyment at the children's pleasure.

The room was furnished handsomely and with taste. One or two portraits and paintings of merit hung on the walls, and over the mantle-piece was a picture of the Nativity, wreathed with holly, and before which two wax candles were burning.

No one heard the step that approached the house; no one saw the wan but handsome face that was thrust close to the panes for a few moments. A tall, well-dressed man stood there looking in, then turned away with a sound like a sob and a sigh and covered his face with his hands. "It is she, my child, my darling; but I am not worthy, O God! I am not worthy!" He did not look in again, but turned and walked down the path leading to the spring, murmuring, "Fifteen years, and so little change in outward things. The same trees, the porch, the door-steps, only that snow-ball and these ailanthuses grown into large bushes, and here and there a flower-bed where there had been grass; but she—ah! how has my darling passed these years that have been so dreary to me?" Just then the kitchen-door opened, flooding the porch floor, the steps, and portion of the walk with light. One of the workmen came out, and the stranger drew himself closely behind a pear-shaped evergreen. "I hope," he thought, "the fellow will not bring a dog with him. He has a bucket in his hand, and may be going to the spring; in that case, I have no escape, for the snow will betray me if I move!" But the man said good-night in a German accent, and, whistling to the Newfoundland which had come out with him, and now stood snuffing the air toward where the stranger was hiding, turned and walked the length of the porch, down the steps at the end, past the pump and smoke-house, out through the gate into the back lane, and so up to the barn. "So," said the stranger, "he has gone to feed the horses for the night, and I am safe." He walked slowly down across the bridge, and stood for a few moments on the topmost step leading to the spring; then went down there, and kneeling on the stones at the edge, scooped up some water in his hand and drank; then rising and brushing the snow off his clothes, he retraced his steps and once more gazed in at the parlor window. It happened that the old colored woman had just picked up the youngest child in her arms, and, followed by the others, was moving toward the door, her face turned full to the window, when she made an exclamation and nearly dropped the child she held. "Why, Tamar," exclaimed Miss Lee, "what's the matter?" "Oh! nothin'," replied the woman, "spec this colored pusson gettin' nervus, dat's all. Come long, chicks, to roost." And she left the room without affording a chance to the group round the fire to see her face, which bore a frightened look. But the children, busy with their happy prattle, did not notice it, neither did the nurse who was waiting for them. As soon as she had seen them snug in their beds, with stockings duly hung, and night prayers said, she started to return to the kitchen. Her mistress heard her, and came into the hall to speak to her, preceding her through the dining-room and across the space on the porch between the dining-room and kitchen doors, much to her satisfaction, to the latter department, to make some necessary arrangements for breakfast. On Miss Lee's return to the parlor, a game of whist was proposed, in which the four elders joined, leaving Florence to the quiet enjoyment of her book. After a rubber of three games, a motion to retire was made by the sisters; and Henry Lee, turning to Florence, said, "Well, Puss, is it not time to give up your book? Half-past eleven, my pet," (looking at his watch,) "and we must be up early, you know, to be ready for church, and dinner at Uncle Joe's to-morrow."

At last the brother and sister were left alone, and stood looking at one another for a few moments; then Mr. Lee spoke: "It must be done to-morrow. Who shall do it—you or I?"

"I think I had better, Harry dear. Women can deal better with women in such a time, although I know your tender, loving heart, and do not doubt it."

"I am glad, Mag, you will take it on yourself, for I feel a very coward in the matter."

"Oh! yes, it is better that I should; but I will not tell her till night—I will not mar the happiness of her Christmas till I cannot help it."

"As you will; and now good-night, I must go and see that matters are all right for the night. You say Anthony has gone up?"

"Oh! yes, some time ago."

"Well, good-night!" He left the parlor, and getting a lantern from the closet under the stairs, lit it, and started to the barn.

It had been the custom in this family, since Anna Lee married, that she and her husband should spend Christmas eve at the old homestead, and return to their own house in Hamilton, with her brother, sister, and niece, on Christmas morning. The early Mass was too early for them to hear it, so the clergyman was willing to give them the holy communion as soon as they had spent a sufficient time in preparation on their arrival. After making their thanksgiving, they adjourned to Mrs. Mohun's house for breakfast. Then, after High Mass and a Christmas dinner at Mrs. Mohun's, the two Lees and Florence returned to "The Solitude."

This programme was carried out as usual on this Christmas day, and the evening found the three sitting quietly in the parlor round the fire-place, with no noise of children's prattle to distract their attention. On pretence of letters to write, Mr. Lee left the women alone with a glance at his sister. No face was flattened against the windows tonight, though old Tamar refrained from looking toward them.

Florence occupied a low seat between her aunt and uncle; and when the latter left the room, Margaret laid her head gently on the young girl's shoulder, and drew her toward her, saying:

"Florence, dearest, your uncle had a letter yesterday from Arthur Hinsdale. One to you came by the same mail; but on reading that directed to him, your uncle decided not to give you yours till he or I had told you something which you must know before you can answer it. Here are both the letters, dear; you can read them in your own room when I have finished. You have often asked," she continued, as Florence took the letters in silence, "to be told something about your mother and father. To-night I will tell you." A hardness came into her voice as she spoke that made the girl look up in surprise. "We lived, till your mother married, in the northern part of the State of New York, among the mountains, where people from the city came every summer to spend the hot months. My father was wealthy, but cared for no life but that of the country, so we saw nothing of the fashionable world, beyond the glimpse caught in the summer. My mother was an invalid, and cared for little beyond her own health; and Anna, who was then a child ten or twelve years old, your mother, and I did pretty much as we pleased. Harry was away at college at Fordham, and, when at home in the vacations, was our constant companion in our rides and walks.

"One summer a party of gentlemen from Philadelphia came up to the Adirondacks to fish. Our farm and house was not far from the spot where they encamped, and we met them several times in riding. Your father was among them." Here she paused, as if choking back some strong feeling, and Florence, slipping on her knees, wound her arms around her, resting her head against her. "Your mother was very beautiful," continued Margaret, threading her fingers through the young girl's golden hair lingeringly, as though she saw a resemblance that she loved to trace, "and it is not to be wondered at that she should have attracted attention. After several accidental meetings, he, your father, took advantage of some trivial accident, the dropping of Florence's whip, or something of the kind, to speak when, one day, we came upon them suddenly. From this it was easy to make an excuse to visit the farm-house with some of his friends. My father was a man of cultivation and education, though he chose to bury himself from the world, and liked the young men. After one or two visits, he invited them to the house freely, I need not tell you the old, old story, dear. Before the time came for the visitors to break up their camp, Paul Athern was engaged to my sister. Florence was but sixteen; Paul said he was nearly twenty-one; and my father insisted that they should wait two years, and there was to be no regular engagement for one year. This was at length agreed to with great reluctance by, by—your father. He also, being a Protestant, made all the necessary promises that your mother should be allowed the full enjoyment of her religion.

"Well, the winter passed quietly as usual, and toward spring a cousin of my mother's wrote, inviting us to pay her a visit in New York. We had once before visited her when I was fourteen and Florence twelve; so remembering the former pleasure, we were quite eager to go, Florence particularly seemed anxious. Tamar's mother was our cook, and had been my grandfather's slave before slavery was done away with in New York. Tamar, a girl of my own age, was our waiting-maid and humble companion and confidante, and was to go with us. After a good deal of hesitation—for he seemed to feel a presentiment of evil—my father consented, and we went to New York. Our visit was nearly over, when, one day, on coming home from a walk with my cousin, I found Florence in the drawing-room with Paul Athern. She looked guilty, and blushed when she saw my look of surprise; but Paul greeted me with great apparent pleasure, and an easy grace that covered whatever confusion he may have felt. That night, when alone in our room, Florence said, 'Mag, was I very, very wrong to let Paul know I was here? I did want to see him so much, dear. Oh! you don't know how I have craved a sight of his dear face!' I could not resist her gentle pleading, so did not blame her very much; but told her I must write to father, it was the right thing to do and I must do it. The answer to my letter was a peremptory order for our instant return home. We, or I, had no idea of disobedience, and so prepared to return at once. The day before we were to have left, Florence was particularly affectionate, and seemed not to wish to be left alone. I had some last errands to attend to, and leaving Tamar and Florence busy with their packing, went out for two or three hours. I returned to find the trunks packed, but neither Florence nor Tamar was in the house. My cousin said Florence kissed her when she went out, saying laughingly, 'May be you won't see me again.' Tamar went with her, carrying her satchel. As evening drew on and they did not return, a great fear came over me, and Cousin Mary had difficulty in keeping me from rushing into the street to seek for them. At last, a ring at the door was followed by Tamar's rushing into the drawing-room. She threw herself at my feet, buried her face in my lap, and cried as if her heart would break. At last, when she could speak, Cousin Mary had great trouble to understand her broken sentences. As for me, I sat stupefied, filled with the one idea that Tamar had come back without Florence.

II.

"At last the frightened girl's story was made out. Florence had taken her, on pretence of carrying her bag; but at Union Square, Paul Athern met them with a carriage, into which they got, and were taken to a hotel down Broadway, (the Astor House, we afterward found it was.) Here they were shown into a private parlor where there was a strange gentleman, who looked, Tamar said, like the minister at home who preached in the little country church near us. He bowed to Paul and Florence when they entered, and then walked over to the farthest window and stood looking out. Mr. Athern had to talk a long time to Miss Florence before she was willing to do something that he wanted her to do. At last he said something that seemed to frighten her, and then he made a sign to the strange gentleman who went to the door of another room opening into this, and opened it. Mr. Tremaine, one of the fishing-party of the previous summer, came in, and before Tamar knew what they were doing, she heard the strange gentleman say, 'I pronounce you man and wife!' Then Florence fainted, and they had great trouble to bring her to. Then they all signed a paper, and the gentlemen shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Athern, and left them. Paul, after a few words to Florence, followed them. As soon as they were alone, Florence threw herself on her knees and cried, 'Oh! what have I done? what have I done? Tamar, do you think my darling father will ever forgive me?' She sobbed and cried, but by the time Paul returned had become quiet. When he came, she asked for paper and pen, as she wished to write to her father. The letter was given to Tamar, with a note to me, exonerating the girl from all blame. Then Mr. Athern said it was time to start to the depot. Florence turned very pale, but didn't say a word, only got up and began to put on her things. Mr. Athern turned to Tamar and told her she was to go home and tell me and Cousin Mary that we would never see Miss Florence again, but that Mr. and Mrs. Athern would be happy to see them on their return from their wedding tour. Then they went to the depot in a carriage, taking Tamar with them, trusting to her getting safe home after they had left, which, thanks to a kind Providence, she did.

"This news threw me into a brain-fever; and when I came to myself, eight weeks after, I was told how my mother had died of a heart disease at the shock of Florence's flight; how a letter had come from Germantown, saying how happy she was if only she knew her dear father had forgiven her; then another, full of grief at the death of her mother and my illness; how my father had sold the old house, and was waiting for my recovery to bury himself and his griefs in the far west. So the next fall saw us fixed out here; and Florence was told of the change, and that her father would never cross the mountains again. My father had not cast her off, as parents do in novels, but his displeasure and disappointment were very great, and he let her know it; his letters, few and seldom, were cold and formal, never again the fond, loving missives they had been during the short separation from him in her childhood. More than all, he grieved over the Protestant marriage; for it was a Presbyterian minister who had performed the ceremony, and Florence had never mentioned having had it performed by a priest. One day, the next summer, as I was sitting at the open door, I saw a carriage drive up to the gate, and a lady get out; in a moment I knew it was Florence, and calling Tamar, ran out to meet her, only to receive her fainting in my arms. Tamar helped to carry her in and lay her on the sofa. Father had gone to Hamilton; and before he returned, we had got her up-stairs, and all traces of her arrival done away with. I waited anxiously for him to come, and wondered how I should tell him; but my anxiety was useless, for he came in with a small glove in his hand, and his first question was, 'Where's Florence?' I had hardly time to tell him, when the door opened, and Florence herself was at his feet.

"I left them alone together, and when I returned, he had placed her on the sofa, and was sitting close to her, holding her hand.

"It was not till the next day that we asked about her journey, and then she told her story.

"Paul had never told his father of his marriage, knowing what different plans the old gentleman had formed, and weakly putting off the evil hour, dreading the scene that would follow. He often told Florence of the urgings his father used to induce him to marry a young lady of the fashionable world, and laughed as he compared his 'meadow daisy,' as he called Florence, to the 'hot-house plant,' that was his father's choice. They managed to get along on the handsome allowance his father made him, and Florence's share of my mother's fortune. One day the little cottage at Germantown was overshadowed by a stately carriage, and out of the carriage came an aristocratic-looking gentleman, who inquired for Mrs. Paul Athern. When Florence presented herself, her gentle beauty had no effect in melting his stony heart, for he did his work well. It was Paul's father. He told her of his plans for Paul, and how he had discovered their secret at last; and, with a cruelty I cannot understand even now, informed her quietly that that marriage was null and void; they both being minors, by the statutes of New York could not contract legal marriage without consent of parents or guardians. Florence heard him out, and then rose and said she would wait till her husband came home to know the truth. 'Your husband, madam, has taken my advice and gone to New York for a few days, and you will not have the opportunity of telling him what he knows already, and knew when, to satisfy you, he went through the mockery of a marriage.'" The listener tightened her hold on Margaret and hid her face; her aunt put both arms around her, and continued: "Here Florence lost all consciousness, and when she came to herself, she was alone. The afternoon was nearly gone; but she called her servant, made her help to pack her trunk, then sent her for a carriage, leaving a note for Paul with the girl in charge of the house. She drove to Philadelphia, waited quietly at a hotel till the next morning, then started for the west.

"My father's anger was fearful, all the more so that he was powerless. Florence was ill for several weeks after her return, and even after she recovered she never looked like herself. She came to us in June; in July came a letter to my father in Paul's handwriting, which he threw into the fire unopened. In October you were born, and in six weeks more your poor mother—died." Here she paused again, and bent her head close to the golden-tressed one pressed to her breast. "My father lived till the next fall, but never the same man. Harry came home from Fordham that summer, and took entire charge of the farm, my father caring for nothing but to carry you about and watch you. For two years we heard nothing of your father; and then the eastern papers were full of a great forgery that had been committed, and the forger was a son of one of the first families in the city. Florence, darling, need I tell his name? The trial proved his guilt, but he managed to escape, and one day we were surprised by his sudden appearance here. He came without any announcement, and walked right into the parlor where I was sitting sewing and Uncle Harry reading, while you were asleep in your cradle. Before we could recognize him almost, he asked in a hoarse voice, 'Where is Florence—where, for God's sake, is my wife?' Then a glance at my black dress and Harry's stern face as he rose to repel his intrusion, seemed to reveal all, and he sank on the floor in a deep swoon.

"We kept his presence in the house a secret from the men on the farm, and only Tamar knew it; fortunately, the house-girl had gone to Hamilton for a few days. He was quite wild for a day or so; and when he came to himself, Harry demanded an explanation, and he gave it.

"He had not known of his father's visit to Germantown till he returned from New York, where he had gone that day at his father's request, having written a letter to that effect to Florence, which must have reached the house very soon after she left it. He was kept in New York on some pretext or another for three or four weeks. His letters to Florence, of course, never reached her, and on his return home he was told by his father that he 'had seen his pretty plaything, and told her some home truths.' A fearful scene followed, when he left his father's house, swearing never to set foot in it again, and that he would be revenged. He did not know that the marriage was illegal, as he was under the impression that he was twenty-one, till his father showed him the record, and then he found his mistake; and, as of course he knew that no Catholic clergyman would perform the ceremony, the Rev. Mr. Bell was the only one who could be found to do it. He had searched for Florence, and written to her father; but, as I knew too well, had received no answer. His allowance being stopped, he suddenly found himself without a penny, and no business or business habits; so he could not come out here to us, and gradually sought forgetfulness in dissipation. At last, by the treachery of a friend, himself the guilty one, he was proved a forger so skilfully that there was no getting over it. He swore solemnly that he was innocent, and felt sure his innocence would one day be proved. He did not stay long, being anxious to get out of the country and the clutches of the law. You were a great comfort to him, dear, during his short stay, but he had to leave you. In fifteen years, Florence, we have heard or seen nothing of him, and his guilt is still believed by those who have not forgotten the circumstances. Now, my darling, you know why I told you this ere your uncle gave you Arthur Hinsdale's letter." The young girl made no answer save a shiver that ran through her frame as she clung closer to her aunt. For a full hour they sat thus in silence; then Harry Lee came into the room. Florence rose to her feet and would have fallen, had her uncle not caught her in his arms, and tenderly, as if she had been a baby, he lifted her, and carried her up to her bed-room. Margaret followed, and tenderly prepared the broken-hearted girl for bed. The letters lay unheeded on the parlor floor.

III.

All through the night Margaret Lee sat by her niece's bed-side, praying for strength for her darling, and watching the fitful slumbers and soothing the sad awakenings. And in the silent watches of the night arose the long-buried ghost of her own life's happiness, and kept guard beside her. There was an episode in the sad story she told her niece that was never mentioned—that she had not allowed herself to think of for many a long year; but to-night memory will not be silenced, and she brings up, once more, the pleasant days when young Tremaine whispered into her ear the same story which Paul told Florence, and the fearful crushing of all her hopes of happiness, when her father forbade her ever to see or speak to him again, his anger was so great against him for having assisted Paul. Margaret submitted quietly, as such natures do; but she never cared for anything afterward beyond doing her strict duty—cheerfully and heartily; but never joyously. Perhaps the old man repented when it was too late; for in two years after, they heard Tremaine was married, and he was very tender to her then. On his death-bed he drew her to him, and, asking her forgiveness if he had made her suffer, blessed her for the fondest love and gentlest tending that ever parent had from child. In that hour Margaret felt repaid for all that had gone before. So, through the long watches of the night, came up the memories of the long ago, and Margaret lived over again the dead joys and sorrows. Toward morning Florence slept quietly, and her watcher threw herself on the bed beside her, and soon fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, the sun had risen, and on glancing at Florence, she found her lying quietly awake.

"Aunt Margaret," said the young girl, "that—that—letter. I know what he wrote, and it is not necessary to tell him, is it?"

"Only under certain circumstances, my darling; your own heart will tell you what."

"Oh! yes, auntie; but that can never be. I can tell him that, and nothing more."

"My poor, dear child, have you not faith enough? do you not think his love for you is strong enough to live through this trial?"

"Yes, oh! yes! But would it be right to inflict the trial on him? I think not; I think the burden is mine alone, and I alone must bear it!"

"God grant you strength to do so, my precious one! If I could have spared you the suffering, how gladly would I have done it!"

"I know that, auntie, dear. Do you think I do not feel and appreciate the years of care and tender love I have had from you and Uncle Harry? I was as happy as any one could be before—before—and I can and will be happy with you still."

"God bless you, dearest!" was Margaret's answer, as she pressed a kiss on her forehead and left the room.

As soon as she was alone, Florence turned the key in her door; then, throwing a dressing-gown around her, fell on her knees before a beautiful engraving of the Mater Dolorosa, which hung over a prie-dieu at the side of her bed. Long she knelt there, her golden hair falling in dishevelled masses over her shoulders, and nearly touching the floor as she knelt. At first there was no sound, but presently her slight frame was convulsed with suppressed weeping that soon found voice in sobs. At last she rose, and began to dress, ever and anon pressing her hands to her head or heart to still their aching. When she was ready to go downstairs, she again knelt before the picture, and prayed for strength to bear her cross, so that not even the shadow of it should fall on those whose tenderness and love had been her shield in the years that had gone.

And then she went down and greeted her uncle with a brave attempt at her usual manner; she neglected nothing that she had been accustomed to do, none of the little services she had been in the habit of rendering; and, but for the sadness that no strength of will could drive from her face, and the silence of the bird-like voice that before made music through the house the whole day long, a casual observer would not have guessed at the sufferings of the previous night.

On going into the parlor, she saw the letters where she had dropped them the night before, and the sight of them sent a cold thrill of pain to her heart; but she picked them up and put them in her pocket. After going through the house as usual, she locked herself up in her room once more, to read the letters. Arthur Hinsdale's to herself was, as she anticipated, a declaration of affection; that to her uncle, written the day after, expressed a hope that he would support his cause if it needed it. And how were they to be answered? Florence paused long in painful thought on the subject, but felt too utterly miserable to come to any conclusion. So the day passed sadly, and so the night and the next day. On the third day Florence felt that some answer must be given and written before another night went by, and set herself to her painful task. Having completed it, she brought the letter down with her into the parlor, and sat down to some pretence of employment that kept her hands busy, though her mind was far off. Presently she heard the galloping of a horse in the lane, and in a few moments a knock at the front-door. The blinds were down over the front windows, so she had not seen any one pass, and, rising, she tried to make her escape before the visitor was admitted. But she was too late. As she opened the parlor door, the front-door was opened from without by her uncle, and she stood face to face with Arthur Hinsdale. The hearty greeting he had met with from Mr. Lee had reassured the young man, and he was not prepared for the frightened look and deadly pallor that overspread Florence's face when she saw him. She stepped back into the parlor, and held out her hand with a desperate attempt to smile. Arthur took the hand and pressed it to his lips. Mr. Lee had closed the parlor door, and she was alone with him. With a desperate effort she commanded her voice enough to make some commonplace remark about his journey, signing him to a chair, while she seated herself.

"I ventured to come, although I had received no answer to my letter. Did you receive it?"

Florence inclined her head.

"Then you knew the reason of my coming?"

Again Florence bowed, but could not speak.

"Miss Athern, was not my letter plain enough—do you not believe me? I do not understand your silence."

"Your—your letter was fully understood, Mr. Hinsdale, and I thank—"

"You thank me, Florence!"

Then in earnest language he told her how he loved her, and how his fear that his letter had not reached her had brought him there, preferring the pain of a double refusal to the doubt in which he must have awaited her reply by post. To all this Florence listened with head bent down and hands clasped; and when he paused for a reply, she pointed to the letter lying on the table. He took it up and walked to the window; a painful silence followed, broken only by the rustling of the paper in his hands. When he had finished reading, he came to her side, and leaning over her said:

"Am I to receive this as your answer?"

"Yes!" said Florence in a whisper.

"A final and decisive answer?"

"Yes!"

"Then pardon me. Miss Athern, that I allowed my heart to read your conduct as I hoped it was meant, not as you really meant it. I gave you credit for a nobler heart than you possess. Let me tell you the truth, though what I say seems a reproach, that offer would never have been made had I not felt assured, by your treatment of me, that it would be accepted."

Florence started, and the eloquent blood rushed to her very temples.

"Mr. Hinsdale, you have no right to speak thus to me!"

She attempted to draw her hands from his grasp, but could not.

"No right!—well, perhaps I have not. Forgive me, Florence, and only remember that I love you."

He still held her hands and tried to look into her face, but she bent her head away from him.

"I love you, Florence, and I feel that I am entitled to a little more consideration than that letter shows, Florence, will you be my wife?"

A low but distinct "No," was the answer.

"Do you mean you do not love me?"

She made no answer, and he dropped or rather flung her hands from him and started to his feet.

"Strange, unfeeling! O fool, fool that I was! to build my happiness on such a crumbling base; to be caught in the net of a false woman's beauty, the smiles of a vain coquette!"

"Arthur, Arthur! you will break my heart!"

She had risen and was standing with one hand resting on the back of a chair, the other pressed to her head. He made a motion to approach her, but she put out her hand with a sign to stop him.

"Now listen to me. I am no false woman, no vain coquette. Until the night I received your letter, I knew no reason why I should not—not—" She hesitated a moment. "I knew no reason why I should not have answered it according to the dictates of my heart; but that night a story of a life was told me that—that changed my whole existence. It is a heavy burden to bear."

"But not, dearest, if I can help you bear it." He would have taken her hand, but she drew back from him, "You cannot, no one can—O God! help me, my heart is broken!" She threw her arms up over her head, and would have fallen had he not caught her. She had not fainted, though for a moment she thought death had come to her relief; and almost in a moment released herself from his arms, and said sadly: "I hoped to have spared us both this misery; but it was God's will that we should not escape it. For myself, a little more does not matter; but for you—O Arthur! forgive me the pain I have made you suffer, and remember my own cross is as heavy as I can bear. Good-by!" She held out her hand—"good-by! You cannot return home to-day, it is too late; but you must excuse me, I will send uncle."

"Florence! I am not going to remain if this is your answer. Do you think I could break bread or sleep under your roof after what has passed? Heavens! do you think I'm a stick or a stone?"

"As you will!" she said wearily, "I cannot help it!"

"Then I will take my leave." He was going; but as he laid his hand on the door-knob, he glanced at her, and the expression of heart-broken misery in the sweet face overcame his injured feelings, and he turned and took her hand. "Forgive me, Florence; I have been rude and unfeeling—selfish in my great disappointment. Forgive me, darling; remember my love is strong enough to bear the heaviest burden you could lay upon it, if your own strength fails, Good-by and God bless you." He raised her hand to his lips, and in another moment was gone.

Every day Florence strove manfully with her trouble, and every night her prayers were said before the Mater Dolorosa, for strength to bear with silent patience the sorrow her loving friends could not cure. But her face grew pale and wan, her form more slight and delicate, till her aunt, in alarm, proposed a change of scene. It was in the early spring, and Margaret Lee proposed a tour through the eastern cities; but Florence begged so hard not to be taken to New York or Philadelphia that the idea was given up. At last they determined to go direct to Boston, and sail thence for Liverpool. This plan was carried out in June, leaving the farm in charge of the overseer, and the house to Tamar.

To a mind like Florence's, imbued with a loving reverence for all connected with the church, filled with a love for the beautiful and grand, and a heart ready to receive their impressions; with an intellect of no common order, and a quick appreciation of the good and noble, a tour through Europe, particularly Spain, France, and Italy, had many charms, and could not but awake an interest that surprised herself. When they settled at Rome for the winter, they had the satisfaction of a decided change for the better in Florence's appearance.

But she had not forgotten; she was only glad that returning strength of body enabled her to hide more effectually the anguish and heart-sick yearning that sometimes seemed unbearable. Several letters came from Arthur Hinsdale during the first year; but Florence returned the same answer to all; and at last the young man desisted. Three years were passed in idling from one point of interest to another, when the tocsin of civil war in the United States waked up the nations, and called the country's loyal children from far and wide to her assistance.

Once more the scene is laid at "The Solitude;" but this time the earth is not clothed in winter's snowy mantle. Hid in the wealth of foliage the trees are wearing, the birds are singing their vesper hymns, the sun is just sinking behind the woods, and throws his last rays over a group seated on the grass near the slope into the ravine.

Henry Lee is there, and Margaret and Annie and her children; but Mr. Mohun is down in Tennessee with Rosecrans, and the wife's brow wears an expression of anxiety, as she watches her children, that was a stranger to it when we last saw her. Florence, too, is there, looking very well, people say; but there is an indefinable change that those nearest her feel, though they cannot say where or in what it lies. One or two young ladies are added to the group, and a young gentleman, whose shoulder-straps show his rank as second lieutenant, while the foot still bound up and the crutches lying near, show cause for his presence on the scene. He is William Mohun, a younger brother of Annie's husband, and was wounded in the siege of Vicksburg. What he is saying now must be listened to.

"I wish you knew our colonel, Mr. Lee; for a braver, nobler, kinder-hearted man never lived. He led a charge at Vicksburg, and exposed himself unsparingly; indeed, he seemed to court death; yet when he could help a wounded man, he was as gentle as a woman. O Miss Florence! a friend of yours is the regimental surgeon—Arthur Hinsdale, don't you remember him?"

"Oh! yes," replied Florence, with wonderful self-command.

"He, too," continued the young man, "deserves the thanks of the nation; for I never saw such devotion to the wounded and dying. Poor Warrington! hope he is not seriously wounded, for he will be a great loss to us; and I hope Hinsdale is with him, for then I know he will be well cared for."

"See, is there any mention of Joe's regiment. Will?" asked his sister-in-law; and the young man referred to the paper in whose columns he had seen the wounding of his colonel—Warrington. Florence rose quietly and went into the house; the old Newfoundland, who had been lying beside her, got up and walked at her side in stately satisfaction, ever and anon thrusting his cold nose into her hand in token of sympathy. When Florence returned, there were traces of tears in her eyes; but her face wore an expression of loving gratification her aunt understood well.

A month and more has passed, and October began to touch, with her changing pencil, the trees and shrubs. The air was hazy and balmy, and the sun still warm; so the family at "The Solitude" spent many of their evenings in the open air. William Mohun was gone back to duty, and the young lady friends were again at home. Florence and her two aunts were busy over comforts for the soldiers, to help them through the weary winter with the thought that loving hearts at home had not forgotten them. One evening Florence had been down to the spring, and, lured by the lovely evening, seated herself in the summer-house on the knoll above it, with a book. She did not hear a carriage which approached the house from the direction of Hamilton, nor did she see the two gentlemen who alighted from it. Mr. Lee received Arthur Hinsdale and his companion with cordial welcome, though surprised at the sudden arrival, and wondering at Arthur's eager, excited manner. He greeted Henry and Margaret warmly, but asked instantly for Florence. They told him where she was, and the young man, instead of crossing the bridge, which would have apprised her of his coming, passed with a swift foot down the lane, and, springing over the fence among the cherry-trees, down the slope, across the path, was in the summer-house almost before Florence saw him.

"Florence, my darling, our trial is at an end. My precious one, I know your secret now. Cruel! that you doubted me. Could you not feel that nothing could change my love?"

He had taken her hands in his, and held them, looking down into her sweet face while he spoke, Florence looked at him in bewilderment; then, with a sobbing, convulsive movement of her lips, almost fainted.

Meanwhile the gentleman, whom Arthur had introduced as Colonel Warrington, followed Henry and Margaret into the parlor by the door that opened at the end of the house toward the gate. When they entered and Margaret turned to offer him a chair, she saw he was deadly pale, and was glancing round the room as if it recalled something painful. At the same moment a veil dropped from Margaret's eyes. She walked up to him, and, laying her hand on his arm, said, "Paul Athern, in heaven's name speak."

"Paul Athern?" said Henry Lee, with a start of surprise.

"Yes," replied the colonel sadly, "I am Paul Athern. God bless you for the care you have taken of my darling. I can see her now without fear. Henry Lee, I can offer you my hand, and you, an honest man, can take it without hesitation."

Henry Lee grasped the hand extended to him warmly, saying, "I never thought anything else, Athern, after the interview we had; but I rejoice that you are relieved from your painful situation and are living to enjoy the change. We began to fear you had died. Tell us all about it; for Florence and Arthur will not join us yet."

Then Paul Athern told how he had gone from "The Solitude" to New Orleans with a firm purpose to win fortune and a fame that would enable him to present himself before Florence in his true relationship. He worked hard and steadily, and gained the confidence of his employers to such an extent that they took him into partnership, and then he came to Ohio to see his child. But the stain was not removed from his name, and he shrank from the meeting at the last, as much as at first he had longed for it. He rode out to "The Solitude" on Christmas eve, and took a peep at the family group through the window, and had gone again without the consolation of hearing Florence speak. He told them how, in looking in at the window the second time, he feared Tamar had seen him, and he had hurried out to his horse and ridden away quickly. So he went back with only the crumb of comfort that stolen look afforded to his starving heart. When the war broke out, he withdrew from business with a comfortable fortune, and returned to C——, raised a company for the —— regiment, and rose to the rank of colonel. During his stay in C——, the family were still in Europe; but he came out to "The Solitude," and had a long talk with Tamar. Then came the wound that had prostrated him and put him into Arthur Hinsdale's hands; during the ravings of the fever he had mentioned names and revealed enough to arouse Arthur's interest and curiosity. As soon as he was well enough, the young man asked for an explanation, first telling why he asked it. Paul told him all, and his story only bound the young surgeon more closely to him. The colonel then paid a glowing tribute to the kindness and care he had received from Arthur, and to his general interest in and treatment of the wounded men. He watched till Paul was well enough to travel, and then obtaining a leave of absence for both from the commanding general, started home. At first Paul refused to accompany Arthur; but one day a wounded officer was brought in and laid on the bed next to the one occupied by him. Arthur made a sign to Paul to help him to remove the man's clothes; he stooped over him to unbutton his coat, when the man opened his eyes, and, after looking round with a startled gaze, fixed them on Paul with a frightened stare. Paul looked and recognized the man who had blighted his whole existence. A fierce struggle arose in his breast, and his fingers ceased their work, while he turned away with a look of disgust and dislike. Arthur looked up at him with surprise, and just then the man made a desperate effort and put out his hand, saying faintly:

"Athern, forgive—here—I have it—all here."

And his hand fluttered toward his heart, then fell, and his eyes sought Paul's with agonized entreaty. It was a hard struggle; but the better angel conquered, and Paul took the hand and said:

"I do forgive you, Brooks, as I hope to be forgiven."

A smile passed over the man's face; he moved his head slightly and was dead. In his breast-pocket were two packages, one addressed to Paul's father, the other to an influential gentleman in Philadelphia. The latter was mailed duly, and the former, Paul, his father being dead, opened. It contained a full acknowledgment of having committed the forgery for which Paul suffered, and an explanation of how it was managed. This determined him at once to return to his wife's family. Meantime the same story had been told in different words in the summer-house down by the spring, and it took so long in the telling that it was almost dark when Margaret, going to call her niece, saw them rise and approach the house, Florence, with a bright look of happiness her face had not worn for years, leaning on Arthur's arm. She hastened with trembling footsteps to the parlor, at the door of which Arthur left her, and in another moment she was clasped in her father's arms.

A gay wedding-party is assembled, when the spring once more puts on her robes of ferial green, in the parlor of "The Solitude." All brides look lovely, they say; but certainly May never smiled on a lovelier one than Florence Athern. Arthur Hinsdale certainly seemed to think so, for he looked at her with reverence mingled with his deep love, as though she were a spirit dropped from the skies. The venerable and dearly loved and honored archbishop is there, and has blessed the new ties; and the bride was given away by that tall, handsome man in brigadier-general's uniform, with one arm in a sling yet, at whose side is the noble form of Henry Lee, while Margaret moves about through the company with her usual quiet grace, and Tamar's face is filled with satisfaction at her young mistress' joy, as she looks in at the door.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

A brother asked Abbot Antony to pray for him. The old man responded: "Neither I can pity thee nor can God, unless thou shalt have been anxious about thyself, and prayed to God."

Abbot Antony again said: "God doth not allow wars to arise in this generation, because he knoweth they are weak and unable to bear them."

Abbot Agathi said: "If a man of wrathful spirit should raise the dead to life, he would not be pleasing to God because of his wrath."

Abbot Pastor said: "Teach thy heart, to observe what thy tongue teacheth others." Again, he said: "Men wish to appear adepts in speaking; but in carrying out those things of which they speak, they are found wanting."

Abbot Macarius said: "If we remember the evils done to us by men, we shall deprive our soul of the power to remember God; but if we call to mind those evils which the demons raise against us, we shall be invulnerable."

Abbot Pastor said of Abbot John the Small that, having prayed to God, all his passions had been taken away, and, thus made proof, he came to a certain old man and said: "Behold a man freed from passion, and compelled to battle with no temptations." And the old man replied: "Go, pray the Lord that he command thee to be tempted, for the soul grows perfect by temptation." And when temptations came back upon him, he no longer prayed to be freed from them, but said, "Lord, give me patience to bear with these temptations."

Abbot Daniel used to say: "The stronger the body the weaker the soul; and the weaker the body the stronger the soul."

Popular Education. [Footnote 51]

[Footnote 51: Report of the Rev. James Fraser. Blackwood's Magazine, Jan. 1868.]

At no period of the world's history have nations and their governments seemed to be in such a feverish state of uncertainty and apprehension. From all quarters of Christendom we hear the cry of change. The last vestiges of the ancient order are disappearing. The rule of caste is everywhere confronted by self-asserting populations, who are no longer willing to bear the patient yoke of servitude, even though consecrated by the traditions of centuries. Russia has abolished her serfdom, so long and so deeply rooted in her soil; and the more advanced nations of Europe, whilst yet retaining their accustomed forms of government, are heaving with the volcanic fires of revolution. We speak not of violent revolution, mainly; but of that other more radical and enduring change, which is the inevitable result of the wonderful mechanical inventions of this age. It is simply impossible in the dread presence of steam and the electric cable, for nations to continue to be what the Greek republics and the Roman empire were, or what mediaeval Europe was, centuries ago. The Christian world is now, for all great practical purposes, one nation. Even that "despotism tempered by assassination" is not now the thing that Talleyrand described in his witty aphorism; for the Czar himself bows to the censure of the world. Napoleon prosecutes the Parisian editors, and sends them to prison; but it avails nothing toward the suppression of the power of opinion. He, to-day, has greater fear of the sentiment of France, than ever his terrible uncle felt for the combined armies of Europe. In England, the House of Peers has become a gloomy pageant, and the Commons, under the new Reform Bill, will henceforth represent, not the gentry, nor even the moneyed lords of the loom, but the toiling millions of Great Britain. In a word, power is passing from the few to the many, from the hereditary rulers to the multitude. We have nothing to do, in this article, with the merits of this vast revolution, as to the manner of change, its good or evil, its probable success or failure. We accept it as a fact, and propose to deal with it as such. It is very possible that all this would have occurred if America had never been discovered; but it is absolutely certain that the achievements of Christopher Columbus and George Washington have been the chief, immediate causes of its rapid consummation. When a Bourbon king, to gratify the traditional policy and animosities of his house, sent his fleets and armies to help the glorious work of building up the independence of this people, little did either he or his enraged and maniac foe, King George, imagine what the end of it all would be! Little did they dream that this land would, in ninety years, contain thirty millions of men of European blood, and that the whole European population would learn new principles, catch new inspirations, and be filled with new longings, new hopes, and stern resolves by intercourse with this young republic. Those pampered kings could not foresee the advent of steam-ships and the telegraph! They could not foretell the power of emigration—how it would people a continent, build up its commerce, fortify it with the materials for armies and navies, ready to be called into existence more magically than the palace of Aladdin, and, above and beyond all, how its sweeping currents of democratic ideas would rush back upon the father-lands everywhere, washing away the old dikes of royalty and caste, and floating the populations over the battlements of feudal castles, musket in hand, and with loud cries for "change;" that is, for the all-essential change which shall see that governments be henceforth established and conducted for the benefit for the governed, and not that the governed shall be held, as they have been for many thousand years heretofore, as the property of the ruler, existing solely for his glory and profit. Europe sends her millions hither, and they in turn send back by every ship to those they left behind, the wonderful record of what they see here; and these inspiring testimonies are read at the firesides of ten thousand hamlets by kindred men whose awakening intelligence and energies are stirring the foundations of European society and shaking all thrones to inevitable ruin, unless they speedily plant themselves on more solid ground than the divine right of kings. It is now very certain that no government anywhere can be said to rest on a sure basis, unless it stand upon the love and confidence of the people. Any other basis is the lawful prey of time and fortune, and will go with the opportunity that may arise for its destruction.

Now, if these be facts with which we have to deal, then a very grave question meets us right here, and it is this: Can any such solid foundation for government be found in a self-governing community? In other words, can the people govern themselves for their own weal, and maintain institutions solely by the force of their own will, which shall accomplish the purposes of good government, and for ever secure the approval of all wise and virtuous citizens? If nay, then, royalty and aristocracy being repudiated, whither shall we fly for refuge and hope? If yea, then how is this most precious end to be attained? We Americans, by birth and blood, and still more so by passionate love of country, say most emphatically that we have never doubted that the way to such a consummation is plain, if only the nation will pursue it. It is nothing new; simply the old and trite aphorism, that a free, self-governing nation can only be so upon the conditions precedent of a clear intelligence and a well-established virtue; the latter (if we may separate the two) must always take precedence, and be regarded as the indispensable prerequisite. It follows, therefore, that education without morality would be at least futile. It is very certain that it would be absolutely fatal; because the intelligent man of vice is armed with keen weapons, which are greatly blunted by ignorance, and are consequently then less dangerous to society. Catiline, the polished patrician, was a greater object of alarm to Cicero and the Roman senate than the rude assassins whom he had hired to do his treason. Before and during the first French revolution, France was ablaze with genius; but, like the high intelligence of the "Archangel ruined," it brought death in its fiery track. Education without morality is more terrible than the sword in the hands of men or a nation. It is not the part of patriotism to deny that we have seen some instances of this in our own favored country, and that the tendency to that perilous condition is very apparent even now. This has resulted from the too prevalent idea, taught by the infidel or indifferent press, and accepted by the unreflecting or equally indifferent citizen, that morality can be maintained without formal or doctrinal religion; that one morality is as good as another; that Plato would answer as well as Christ; that what even the pagans taught—to deal honestly by your neighbor and perform the domestic and public duties of life with reasonable decency—is quite sufficient; and that all else is nothing more than priestly dogmatism and controversial jargon. So that, indeed, the prevailing opinion of the country would almost seem to be (if we judge it by the secular press and multitudes of very honest and intelligent citizens) that America, as a Christian democratic nation, may be satisfied to be as moral, and consequently as grand and powerful, as was pagan Rome in the days of her republican simplicity of manners. They forget or ignore the history of the Decline and Fall, and fail to see in that tremendous catastrophe of the most extraordinary people of the ancient world, the logical development of the certain causes of destruction which were inherent in the nation from the day that Romulus slew his brother upon the wall of the rising city. It cannot be that Christ came for a delusion and a snare, or even as a simple fatuity. If his coming was necessary, then it was to teach a new religion and a new morality; the one inseparable from the other. If this be indisputable, then all education which is not based expressly and clearly upon religion is heathenish, and will prove destructive in the end. It will destroy the very people whom it was expected to save. It will consume them as a fire. Pride and lust of power will burn out the public conscience. The nation will drip with the blood of unjustifiable conquest, as did pagan Rome, or be given up to the ferocious struggle for individual aggrandizement, as seen in later revolutionary times. The father of our country fully recognized these principles, and in the foregoing we have but echoed his words of warning in his Farewell Address to the American People:

"Of all dispositions and habits," he says, "which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. A volume could not trace all their connection with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for regulation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

To this it will be replied, by some well-meaning persons, "How can we place education in the United States upon the basis of doctrinal religion, when we have innumerable sects, none of which absolutely agree?" And now we approach the marrow of the subject.

First, let us clear away one difficulty. Let it be very distinctly comprehended that nowhere can the state find its commission as exclusive educator of the people. That is a duty and a privilege belonging, of original right, to the family; it is domestical and not political, though it may be always, and is most frequently, wise and politic that the state should lend efficient aid to assist, but not arbitrarily to control the training of the free citizen's child. The parent is placed over the child by the Creator, and is the natural guardian, primarily responsible for the training which is to lead through this valley of probation to the eternal home. Religious freedom, freedom of conscience, is not a right granted by constitutions, but is the result of the relation of man as a free, moral agent to the Creator who thought fit to make him the master of his own destiny here and hereafter. To coerce the conscience of the child by an educational system, actively or passively, (for there may be effective coercion by negative means,) is to violate the sacred rights of the parent, vested in him by the divine appointment. There is not a religious man, following any form of worship, professing to be a Christian and an American, who can seriously deny this proposition, or who would accept any other in a question involving his rights and duties in regard to his own off-spring. No such man, we are sure, would tolerate any assumption of the authority on the part of the state to step between him and his child in the matter of religious belief and instruction. No other form of tyranny would arouse so quickly the indignant resistance of an American citizen and father; and every upright man feels in his heart that what would be so grievous to him should not be imposed upon any other of his fellow-citizens, directly or indirectly. Actuated by such views in the main, the state provides a system of public schools from which, theoretical (and it may be practically in most cases,) all forms of doctrinal religion are excluded, and education is based upon a vague, undefined, generalized moral teaching which very many eminent men of different religious denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because the doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not taught in such schools according to any interpretation whatever, for the plain reason that it could not be done without such manifest injustice and wrong as we have already protested against. To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young children is, in reality, to lead them to the fountain of living waters and forbid them to drink; whereas, "to expound the word" is, at once, to violate the absolute neutrality which the state is bound to maintain in the presence of conflicting interpretations and dissenting consciences. Such is the precise difficulty. Hence it is, that the Catholic Church has set its face against the peril with which such a system of education threatens its youth; and the Catholic pastors and their flocks, though struggling with poverty, and harassed by ten thousand pressing claims upon their charity, have strained every nerve to establish parochial and other denominational schools where secular education could be imparted without sacrificing religious instruction.

There is no doubt but that there are many strong and marked doctrinal differences between the various Protestant denominations which have led some of their most eminent men to argue against the possibility of a perfect or desirable system of public schools upon the mixed or non-intervention basis. Nevertheless, it is also true that in the fundamental point, essentially characteristic of Protestantism, and in which it especially differs from the Catholic Church (private interpretation and the rejection of tradition) all Protestant churches agree; and herein we find the reason why they can conform to the necessities of such a public-school system as we have described, with some degree of amalgamation; whereas their Catholic fellow-citizens cannot avail themselves of the secular advantages of such schools without a total sacrifice of religious training. We are told by the Rev. James Fraser, despatched on an official mission for the purpose of reporting on the whole subject to the commissioners appointed by her Majesty Queen Victoria, and who visited the United States in 1865, that one of the influences adverse to the success of our American common-school system is, "the growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required, and that even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to;" and another "influence" is "the very lukewarm support that it receives from the clergy of any denomination, and the languid way in which its claims on support and sympathy are rested on the higher motives of Christian duty;" from which, and other causes, the Rev. Mr. Fraser reluctantly augurs misfortune to the system itself in the future. There can be no doubt but that such "lukewarmness" does exist, and that it is produced solely by the "growing feeling that more distinctly religious teaching is required." No accord of the Protestant sects upon what they call "essentials," can permanently reconcile them to either a doctrinal teaching at the public schools, in which it would be impossible for them all to agree, or to the alternative necessity of excluding from the schools all manner of "distinct religious teaching," without which "even the interests of morality are imperfectly attended to." Hence springs not only the lukewarmness, but the affirmative opposition of distinguished Protestant clergymen to the "godless system."

It is altogether erroneous, however, to suppose, and unjust to charge, that Catholics are hostile to the continuance of the present schools. FAR FROM IT. They rejoice to see their Protestant fellow-citizens availing themselves freely of those great opportunities to instruct the future self-governing citizens of the young republic. They appreciate, nay, they insist upon the absolute necessity of raising the standard of popular intelligence, so as to insure the wisest possible administration of public affairs through the agency of the elective franchise. That their church is profoundly solicitous for the secular education of her people is too manifest for dispute, since she has, by the instrumentality of her various religious orders, established universities, colleges, academies, and innumerable preparatory schools in every great city, and throughout the rural districts of the country, wherever it was possible to do so. A glance at the Catholic Register or Directory, for 1868, will satisfy the most sceptical upon that point. The Roman Catholic Church has covered Europe with such institutions, grand in design, and magnificent in endowment; and it is not her purpose to permit her children in America to fall behind the age for the want of similar advantages, if she can supply their necessities. She is ever appealing to their public spirit, their patriotism, their religious sentiment, to obtain the means to build and conduct her educational establishments; and most nobly have they ever responded; for it was by the steady contributions of the poor mainly, that nearly all of those great works were begun and perfected.

But we may well adopt the assertion of a writer in the last January number of Blackwood's Magazine, that "the fact is palpable and every statesman, philosopher, and candid student of the educational question confesses, that voluntary agencies are wholly unable to undertake a task so gigantic," as that of reaching the great mass of helpless ignorance existing even in the most favored communities. It is exactly here that government may legitimately step in with its organized resources, but without wearing the pedagogue's cap. The wisest governments of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, have done this. They have abandoned the Lacedemonian usurpation of domestic rights, reproduced by the first Napoleon, as he expressed the policy in his curt style, "My principal end in the establishment of a teaching corps is to possess the means of directing political and moral opinions." A candid confession for an autocrat. The nephew, who now reigns over France, has learned by the experience of misfortune to be wiser and more faithful to natural rights. In Catholic France education is entirely free and without favoritism. The public educational fund is equitably distributed to Catholic and Protestant, and each is permitted to rear, under the supervision of their respective clergy, as they may elect, the children of their own religious household. Conscience is respected; and yet the youth of the country are not deprived of instruction in the Christian faith at the public schools. Protestant Prussia is as liberal and as wise as France, and her system of public instruction is based upon the necessity of religious teaching, and the right of the parent to direct the child, and the just relation of the pastor to the parent, and therefore the equity of a proper distribution of the public-school fund. We have not the time, nor is it necessary to go into the details; but it is sufficient to say that the Prussian system concedes more to the Prussian Catholic than the American Catholic has yet asked from an enlightened and democratic American government; and yet, strange to say, the American Catholic has been violently and persistently charged with hostility to public education, and a conspiracy to destroy republican institutions! Even England, iron-clad in her prejudices, has adopted the principles of Prussia, niggardly as her policy toward the public schools has always been. And what shall we say of "benighted Austria," the land of popish concordats! Let Mr. Kay, a recognized authority upon matters of education, and a Protestant, answer this question.

"The most interesting and satisfactory feature of the Austrian system is the great liberality with which the government, though so staunch an adherent and supporter of the Romanist priesthood, has treated the religious parties who differ from themselves in their religious dogma. It has been entirely owing to this liberality that neither the great number of the sects in Austria, nor the great differences of their religious tenets, has hindered the work of the education of the poor throughout the empire. Here, as elsewhere, it has been demonstrated that such difficulties may be easily overcome, when a government understands how to raise a nation in civilization, and wishes earnestly to do so.

"In those parishes of the Austrian empire where there are any dissenters from the Roman Church, the education of their children is not directed by the priests, but is committed to the care of the dissenting ministers. These latter are empowered and required by government to provide for, to watch over, and to educate the children of their own sects in the same manner as the priests are required to do for the education of their children."

He also says:

"And yet in these countries—Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhine provinces, and the Catholic Swiss cantons—the difficulties arising from religious differences have been overcome, and all their children have been brought under the influence of religious education without any religious party having been offended." (Kay, vol. ii. p. 3.)

And bearing testimony to the earnest desire of the Catholic Church to advance the education of her children everywhere, he says:

"In Catholic Germany, in France, and even in Italy, the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is, at least, as generally diffused and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body as in Scotland. It is by their own advance, and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the popish priesthood of the present day seeks to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort upon our Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries, at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is, in reality, not only not suppressed, but is encouraged by the popish church and is a mighty instrument in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are at short distances public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes of the neighborhood. Rome, with a population of 158,000 souls, has 372 public primary schools, with 482 teachers, and 14,000 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many schools for the instruction of these classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university, with an average number of 600 students, and the papal states, with a population of 2,500,000, contains seven universities; Prussia, with a population of 14,000,000, has but seven."

If the church has been found in hostility to educational systems, it has been when, as in Ireland, the schools have been made proselytizing agencies and instruments of oppression; and if she has disfavored without opposing other systems, as here, it was solely to preserve her own people from the damaging effects of a purely secular education, and to secure for them the higher advantages of a religious training. If others find that the schools answer all their wants, she is well pleased to see them derive every benefit therefrom which the best administration of such a system can produce. But the Catholic people say: If we who are counted by millions, and who are daily adding to the wealth of the nation by our labor and enterprise, are required to pay taxes for the support of the public schools which we cannot use for the education of our children, ought we not, at least, to receive an equitable proportion of the public fund, to assist us in securing what every good citizen wishes to see accomplished, the education of our youth? We are now millions, and millions more are coming, by ship and steamer, every day, almost every hour. We are a part of the nation, children and citizens of the great republic. Shall we add to the virtue and intelligence of the community, or to its ignorance and vice? We are struggling with all our might, and devoting all our means to reach the lowest stratum of our society, and lift it up into the light and air of secular knowledge and spiritual grace. Why should not the State of New York help in the good work?

The regulations of France, Prussia, Austria, England, and other countries of Europe would assuredly afford to our legislators the practical details of a good working system, which it is not our province to suggest in form, uninvited. Let it be conceded, however, that millions of men throughout this country should not be taxed for establishments of which they cannot conscientiously avail themselves, unless, at the same time, they are permitted to participate, in a reasonable way, in the enormous funds derived from those tax-rates. Let the schools, though denominational when endowed by the state, be subject to state inspection so far as to insure the full compliance with the requirements of the general law as to the standard of education to be bestowed, but with no further control over management or discipline.

In the European countries referred to, (it may be said here generally,) each religious denomination when sufficiently numerous in a district to justify it, is permitted to establish a denominational school; receiving its share of the public fund, and being subject to governmental inspection as to the proper application of the money, and the faithful discharge of the engagement to impart secular knowledge according to the fixed educational standard. The selection of the school-books and the religious training of the children are in such cases placed in the charge of the clergy, or made subject to their revision. Where the religious denomination has not sufficient numerical strength to enable it to establish a separate school, its children attend the other public school or schools, but are carefully guarded against all attempts at proselytizing, and their religious instruction is confided to their own ministers. In no instance is the proper proportion of the school fund ever refused to any denomination which has the number requisite under the law for the establishment of a separate school. By these means, perfect freedom of conscience is preserved, and public harmony and good-will promoted; whilst at the same time, the children of all churches are brought up in the wisdom of the world without losing the fear of God. In this way, too, religious freedom becomes a practical thing, and not a constitutional platitude or an empty national boast. In this serious matter, this great national concern, those European monarchies have expelled sham altogether. Have we? Do we in the United States, vaunting our hatred of "church and state," our devotion to entire freedom of conscience, our preeminent love of "fair play," our respect for the inviolable rights of minorities, do we imitate the liberal example of monarchical Europe, Catholic and Protestant, when we tax our six millions of Catholics for public schools, and then refuse them a participation in the fund? What just man will say that such a rule is right? What wise man will say that it is politic? At least, let it not be said that in our great cities, where there are tens of thousands of poor Catholic children, and in those rural districts where the numbers are notoriously sufficient to justify the establishment of one or more schools, they shall be driven to seek an education under a system which their parents cannot conscientiously sanction, or be left to the chances of procuring the rudiments of learning from the over-taxed and doubly-taxed resources of their co-religionists. Help the schools now actually existing, and which are filled to overflowing with eager scholars; and assist those who are willing to build up others; the cost is no greater; the educational policy of the state is equally satisfied, whilst the morals of the rising generation, purified by religious faith and strengthened by religious practices, will give the republic assurance of a glorious future.

We are satisfied that such a system would give us an enlightened Christian people, and not merely a nation of intelligent men of the world, as cold as they are polished, and as indifferent to divine things as they are eager for the pleasures of sense and the pride of life.

This would be a truly solid basis upon which to build and perpetuate the empire of a self-governing nation. Without this, our constitution is a rope of sand, our republicanism a delusion, and our freedom a miserable snare to the down-trodden nationalities all over the earth.

All Souls' Day—1867.

Dying? along the trembling mountain flies
The fearful whisper fast from cot to cot;
Strong fathers stand aghast and mothers' eyes
Melt as their white lips stammer, "Not, oh! not
Him of all others? Nay,
Not him who from our hearths so oft drove death away?"

Well may those pale groups gather at each door.
Well may those tears that dread the worst be shed.
The hand that healed their ills will bless no more,
The life that served to lengthen theirs has fled;
And while they pray and weep,
Unto his rest he passeth like a child asleep.

Ah! this is sudden! why, this very morn
He rode amongst us: sick men woke to hear
The step of his black pacer: the new-born
Smiled at him from their cradles; many a tear
On faces wan and dim.
He dried to-day: to-night those cheeks are wet for him.

For there he lies, together gently laid
The hands we were so proud of, his white hair
Making the silver halo that it made
In life around his brow; as if in prayer
The gentle face composed.
With nameless peace o'ershadowing the eyelids closed.

And as beside him through the night we hold
Our solitary watch, I had not started
To hear my name break from him, as of old,
Or see the tranquil lips a moment parted.
To speak the word unsaid,
The last supreme adieu that instant death forbade.

I dread the day-dawn, for his silent rest
Befits the night: I half believe him mine,
While in the tapers' shadowy light, his breast
Seems heaving, and, amid the pale moonshine
That wanders o'er the lawn.
Crouch the still hounds unknowing that their master's gone.

But when the morning at his window stands
In glory beckoning, and he answers not;
Not for the wringing of the widowed hands,
Or orphans wrestling with their bitter lot,
I feel, old friend, too well,
That naught can wake thee but the final miracle.

Was it but yesterday, that at my gate,
Beneath the over-arching oaks we met;
Throned in his saddle, statue-like he sate,
A horseman every inch: I see him yet,
His morning mission done.
His deep-mouthed pack behind him trailing, one by one.

Mute are the mountains now! No more that cry
Of the full chase by all the breezes borne
Down the defiles, while echo's swift reply
Speeds the loud chorus! Nevermore the horn
Of our lost chief will shake
Those tempest-riven crags, or pierce the startled brake!

Those summits were his refuge when the touch
Of gloom was on him, and the gathered care
Of long life, that braved and suffered much,
Drove him from beaten walks, to breathe the air
That, haunts gray Carrick's crest,
And spur from dawn to dusk till effort purchased rest.

But yet, in all these thirty years, how few
The days we saw not the familiar form
Amid the valleys passing, till it grew
Part of the landscape: through the sun or storm
With equal front he rode,
Punctual as planets moving in the paths of God.

I've seen him, when the frozen tempest beat,
Breast it as gayly as the birds that played
Upon the drifts: and through the deadly heat
That drove the fainting reapers to the shade.
Smiling he passed along.
Erect the good gray head, and on his lips a song.

I've known him too, by anguish chained abed,
Forsake his midnight pillow with a moan,
And meekly ride wherever pity led,
To heal a sorrow slighter than his own;
Or rich or poor the same—
It mattered not: let any sorrow call, he came.

Thy life was sacrifice, my own old friend,
Yet sacrifice that earned a sacred joy,
For in thy breast kept beating to the end,
The trust and honest gladness of a boy;
The seventy years that span
Thy course, leave thee as pure as when their date began.

Who could have dreamed the sharp, sad overthrow
Of such a life, so tender, strong, and brave?
My pulse seems answering thy finger now—
'Twas one step from the stirrup to the grave!
Oh! lift your load with care,
And gently to its rest the precious burden bear.

All Souls' Day! as they place him in the aisle.
The bells his youth obeyed for Mass are ringing;
And, as beneath the churchyard gate we file,
To latest rite his honored relics bringing.
You'd think the dead had all
Arrayed their little homes for some high festival.

As if for him the flowering chaplets, strewn
Throughout God's acre, breathe a second spring;
To him the ivy on the sculptured stone
A welcome from the tomb seems whispering:
The buried wear their best.
As, in their midst, their old companion takes his rest.

Yes, he is yours, not ours: set down the bier:
To you we leave him with a ready trust:
Beneath this sod there's scarce a spirit here
That was not once his friend: Oh! guard his dust!
And if your ashes may
Thrill to old love, your graves are gladder than our hearths to-day.

Is it Honest? [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: Sermons in answer to the Tract, Is it Honest? By Rev. L. W. Bacon. The Brooklyn Times, March 9th, 17th, 24th, 1868.]

A brief tract, issued a short time since by The Catholic Publication Society, seems to have produced an unusual commotion among our non-Catholic brethren, and has called forth reply after reply from the sectarian press and pulpit. The tract is very brief, and consists only of a few pointed questions; but it has kindled a great fire, and compelled Protestants to come forward and attempt to defend their honesty, in uttering their false charges and gross calumnies against Catholics and the church. It has put them on their defence, made them feel that they, not the church, are now on trial before the public. This is no little gain, and they do not have so easy a time of it, in defending their libels, as they had in forging and uttering them, when Catholics had no organ through which they could speak, and were so borne down by public clamor that their voice could not have been heard in denial, even if they had raised it. Times have changed since those sad days when it was only necessary to vent a false charge against the church, to have it accredited and insisted on by a fanatical multitude as undeniable truth, however ridiculous or absurd it might be.

Since our sectarian opponents have been put upon their defence, we trust Catholics will keep them to it. We have acted on the defensive long enough, and turn about is only fair play. They must now prove their libels, or suffer judgment to go against them. They feel that it is so, and they open their defence resolutely, with apparent confidence and pluck. They have no lack of words and show no misgiving. This is well; it is as we would have it, for we wish them to have a fair trial, and to make the strongest, boldest, and best defence the nature of the case admits.

In our remarks we shall confine ourselves principally to the justification attempted by Mr. Bacon, in his sermons, as we find them in the Brooklyn Times; and we must remind him in the outset that the assumption with which he commences—that the tract, in appealing to the good sense of the public, whether it is honest to insist on certain charges against the church as true, when the slightest inquiry would show them to be false—makes an important concession, or any concession at all to the Protestant rule, is altogether unwarranted. He says: "This submitting of the questions in dispute to the public, man by man, after the Protestant, the American fashion—concedes at the outset one great and most vital principle, to wit, that the ultimate appeal in questions of personal belief, is to each man's reason and conscience in the sight of God." Quite a mistake. There is no question of personal belief in the case. The question submitted to the public by the tract is not whether what the church teaches and Catholics believe is true or false, but whether it is honest to continue to accuse the church and Catholics of holding and doing what it is well known, or may easily be known, they do not do, and declare they do not hold? This is the question, and the only question, submitted. Is it honest to continue repeating day after day, and year after year, foul calumnies against your neighbor, when the proofs that they are calumnies lie under your hand, and spread out before your eyes so plainly that he who runs may read? We think even the smallest measure of common sense is sufficient to answer that question, which is, on one side, simply a question of fact, and on the other, a question of very ordinary morals. The competency of reason to decide far more difficult questions than that, no Catholic ever disputes. We think even the reason of a pagan can go as far as that. "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?"

"But this tract," the preacher continues, "is a plain assertion that no man ought blindly to accept the religious opinions to which he is born, nor the instructions of his religious teachers; but that he is bound, in honesty and justice, to hear the other side, and decide between them by his own private judgment." If by opinions is meant faith, it does no such thing; if by opinions are meant only opinions, it may pass, though the tract neither argues nor touches the question. The Catholic always supposes man is endowed with reason and understanding, and that both are active in the act of faith as in an act of science. There is and can be no such thing as blind faith, though blind prejudices are not uncommon. Men seek or inquire for what they have not, not for what they have. They who have the faith do not seek it, and can examine what is opposed to it only for the purpose of avoiding or refuting it. Catholics have the faith; they are in possession of the truth, and have no need to make for themselves the examination supposed. Non-Catholics have not the faith; they have only opinions, often very erroneous, very absurd, and very hurtful opinions, and they are therefore bound, not by the opinions they have received from their religious teachers, or to which they were born, but to seek diligently, with open minds and open hearts, for the truth till they find it. When they find it, they will not be bound to seek it, but to adhere to it, and obey it. There is no Protestant teaching in this, and it is nothing "different from what the Church of Rome always teaches her followers."

The tract says: "Americans love fair play." The preacher says:

"I believe it is no more than the truth. If there is one thing rather than another that Americans do love, it is this very thing—absolute freedom and fairness of religious discussion. Curious, isn't it? How came Americans to 'love fair play'? Englishmen seem to have a similar taste. Catholic or Protestant in England can speak or write his thoughts, on either side, without hinderance or constraint. The same thing may be remarked, in a measure, in Northern Germany. How can you account for it? What is the reason, do you suppose, why they don't 'love fair play' in Spain? or in Austria? or in Mexico? or in Rome? This injured innocent stands in New York, at the corners of the streets, bemoaning himself that he is treated 'dishonestly, and unjustly,' because the public will not buy and read his books; and all the time, in the Holy City itself—under the direct fatherly government of the pope—a subject is not allowed to be (as this tract says) 'honest and just' toward Protestant Christians by examining both sides, except at the peril of being punished as for an infamous crime! 'Americans love fair play.' Why do all Roman Catholic nations suppress it? Why does the pope forbid it in his own dominions? And what reason have we to believe that, if these who are clamoring for 'fair play' should ever hold the power in this country, they would put it to any different use here, from that which prevails in Catholic countries generally?"

We are not aware that there is any less love of fair play in Spain, Mexico, or Rome, than in the United States, England, or North-Germany, in Catholic than in non-Catholic countries, only there is more faith and less need to seek it, or to examine both sides in order to find it. As a matter of fact, though we cannot regard it as any great merit, Catholics are generally far more ready to hear both sides, and to read Protestant books, than Protestants are to read Catholic books. We have never met with intelligent Catholics as ignorant of Protestantism as we have generally found intelligent Protestants of Catholicity. There is nothing among Catholics to correspond to the blind prejudice, deplorable ignorance, and narrow-minded bigotry of sectarians; but we are happy to believe that even these are mellowing with time, losing many of their old prejudices, and becoming more enlightened and less bigoted and intolerant; there is still room for improvement.

"Let us understand in the outset," says the preacher, "that the charges against Catholics and the Catholic Church that are complained of in this tract, are conceded by the writer to be of grave importance. The prohibiting of the Bible to the people—the belief that priestly absolution has efficacy of itself, and is not merely conditional on the sincerity of the sinner's repentance—the paying to images of such worship as the heathen do—all these are declared by this writer to be 'detestable and horrible.' So that if it should appear that any one of them is proved against Catholics or the Catholic Church, the case is closed against them. He is not at liberty to go back and apologize for the doctrine or palliate it. He has declared it to be 'false doctrine'—'detestable and horrible.'"

What the tract regards as important or unimportant, is nothing to the purpose; what the preacher must prove is, that it is honest to continue to repeat charges against Catholics and the Catholic Church which have been amply refuted, and the refutation of which is within the reach of every one who would know the truth; or at least he must show that the refutation is insufficient, and that the charges are not false, but true. He will not find us shrinking from the truth, apologizing for it, or seeking to get behind it or around it. We, however, beg him to understand that he is the party accused, and on trial, not we, and that we are probably better judges on doubtful points, of what is or is not Catholic doctrine and practice, than he or any of his brethren. He will do well, also, to bear in mind that the question raised by the tract is not whether the doctrine of the church is true or false, but whether it is honest to persist in saying that it is what the church and all Catholics affirm that it is not. What he must prove, in order to be acquitted, is that the church and Catholics do hold what the tract denies, and denies on authority, or that there are good and sufficient reasons for believing that they do so hold.

1. The tract asks, "Is it honest to say that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of the Bible, when anybody who chooses can buy as many as he likes at any Catholic bookstore, and can see on the page of any one of them the approbation of the bishops of the Catholic Church, with the pope at their head, encouraging Catholics to read the Bible, in these words, 'The faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures,' and that not only for the Catholics of the United States, but also for those of the whole world." Mr. Bacon does not meet directly the facts alleged by the tract, nor plead truth in justification of the libel; but undertakes to show that even if false, yet Protestants may be personally honest in uttering it; and he adduces various circumstances which he thinks may very innocently induce Protestants to suppose that the church does prohibit the use of the Bible. We have not the patience to take up in detail all the circumstances alleged, and refute the inferences drawn from them; most of them are mere inventions, perversions of the truth, misapprehensions of the facts in the case, and none, nor all of them together, justify the inference, in face of what the tract alleges, that the church prohibits the use of the Bible; and it is easy for any one who honestly seeks the truth to know that they do not.

The facts alleged by the tract are accessible to all who wish to know them. He who makes a false charge through ignorance, when he can with ordinary prudence know that it is false, is not excusable; and it is not surely in those who claim to be the enlightened portion of mankind to attempt to defend their honesty at the expense of their intelligence. They are the last people in the world, if we take them at their estimate of themselves, to be permitted to plead invincible ignorance.

The Newark Evening Journal is bolder and more direct than Mr. Bacon. It asserts that the Church actually forbids the reading of the Scriptures, and boldly challenges the fact alleged by the tract. It says: "On the very page from which are taken the words, 'The faithful should be excited to read the Holy Scriptures,' are quoted, it is also said, 'To guard against error it was judged necessary to forbid the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar languages, without the advice and permission of the pastors and spiritual guides whom God has appointed to govern his Church.' How then can it be false to say that the Church prohibits the use of the Holy Scriptures?" Simply because to forbid the abuse of a thing is not to prohibit its use. The faithful, for the promotion of faith and piety, are excited to read the Scriptures; but to guard against error or the abuse of the sacred writings, those who would wrest them to their own destruction are forbidden to read them in the vulgar languages, except under the direction of their spiritual guides. A prudent and loving father forbids his child, who has a morbid appetite or a sickly constitution, to eat of a certain kind of food except under the direction of the family physician, lest the child should be injured by it; can you therefore say that he prohibits the use of that kind of food? Certainly not. All you can say is, that while he concedes the use, he takes precautions against the abuse, which is in no sense inconsistent with anything asserted by the tract.

Mr. Bacon, referring to reported cases of the confiscation of Bibles, circulated by the Bible Society, found in the hands of the laity, says the French Bible confiscated was the Catholic version of De Sacy; that the Polish Bible circulated by the Bible Society was, word for word, the copy of the version published two centuries before, and approved by two popes; the Italian Bible, for reading which the godly family Madiai were persecuted and imprisoned, was the Catholic version [not so] of Martini, Archbishop of Florence, published with the approbation and sanction of Pope Pius VI. Suppose this correct, it does not prove that the Church prohibits the use of the Holy Scriptures, but is very good proof to the contrary. These versions were made and published for the people, and would have been neither made nor published if the use of the Scriptures was forbidden. And how can you say that popes prohibit what you show they approved and sanctioned? There was a German Bible before Luther, and our Douay Bible was published before the version of King James.

"But I am not willing," continues the preacher, "that this effrontery [what effrontery?] of this question should be let go even with this answer." We can easily believe it. "I am ready to call witnesses." Well, dear doctor, your witnesses; we are ready to hear their testimony. "Whoever heard of a Catholic Bible Society multiplying copies of the Bible?" Nobody that we know of. But how long is it since Protestants had a Bible Society? Prior to that, did they prohibit the use of the Holy Scriptures? "Popes have fulminated their bulls against Bible Societies, denouncing them as an invention of the devil." Not unlikely; but it is one thing to denounce Bible Societies, and another to prohibit the use or the reading of the Bible. Your witnesses. Rev. sir, do not testify to the point. Besides, all the facts, or pretended facts, you bring forward are too recent for your purpose. The accusation that the Church prohibits the use of the Scriptures was made by Protestants long before any of them are even said to have occurred, and therefore could not have originated in them. Ex-post facto causes are not admitted in catholic philosophy. The charge brought against the Church betrays no little folly and ingratitude. If the Church had prohibited the use of the Scriptures, how could the Reformers have got a copy of them? They certainly purloined them from her, and could have got them from no other source.

The preacher concludes his first sermon by saying: "I am glad the time has come when it is understood on both sides that, if the Roman Church is to commend itself to the American people, it must begin by repudiating, as horrible and detestable, the teaching and practice for three hundred years of the church." What has for three hundred years been falsely alleged by her enemies to be her teaching and practice, agreed; but what has really been her teaching and practice, denied. "Let it but make good this new claim, and we thank God for the new reformation, and welcome it to the platform of Protestantism." There is no new claim in the case; what the tract asserts has always been the doctrine and practice of the church; she has always encouraged the use and opposed the abuse of the Holy Scriptures. That the preacher should desire a new reformation can be easily understood, for the old has well-nigh run out; that he will ever be able to welcome the church to the platform of Protestantism is, however, not likely; for she is not fond of standing on platforms, and prefers to remain seated on the rock. The reverend gentleman may be shocked to hear it; but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that the Bible and reason are not special Protestant possessions; they were ours ages before Protestantism was born, and will be ours ages after Protestantism is dead and forgotten.

2. In his second sermon—in a note to which he corrects his assertion that it was the Catholic version of Martini, and states that it was the Protestant version of Diodati, that was used by the godly family of the Madiai—the preacher confines his efforts to questions raised by the tract with regard to the worship of images and pictures, and of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:

"Is it honest to accuse Catholics of paying divine worship to images or pictures as the heathen do—when any Catholic indignantly repudiates any idea of the kind, and when the Council of Trent distinctly declares the doctrine of the Catholic Church in regard to them to be, 'that there is no divinity or virtue in them which should appear to claim the tribute of one's veneration;' but that all the honor which is paid to them shall be referred to the originals whom they are designed to represent?' (Sess. 25.)

"The answer to this question," the preacher says, "is to be found by asking two others: 1. What sort of honors do the heathen pay to images? 2. What sort of honors do Roman Catholics pay to them? When we have got answers to these two, we can compare them, and shall be able to say whether they are the same."

We respectfully submit that neither of these questions need be asked; for so far as pertinent, both are answered in the tract itself. The accusation against Catholics which the tract implies cannot be honestly made, is that we pay divine worship to images and pictures, as the heathen do; what the tract then denies is that Catholics pay divine worship to images and pictures; and what it asserts is, that the heathen do pay them divine worship; but this assertion is simply illustrative, and should it be found inexact, it would not affect the formal denial that the worship Catholics pay them is divine. As to what sort of worship Catholics do render to images and pictures, the answer in the tract is explicit, that it is a "certain tribute of veneration paid them in honor of their original. The worship is not divine worship, and the honor paid is not paid to them for any virtue in them, but is referred solely to their originals." The catechism puts this clearly enough. "Q. And is it allowable to honor relics, crucifixes, and holy pictures? A. Yes; with an inferior and relative honor, as they relate to Christ and his saints, and are the memorials of them. Q. May we then pray to relics and images? A. No; by no means, for they have no life or sense to hear or help us."

The preacher labors to show that this inferior and relative honor is precisely what the heathen pay to the images of their gods; but this, if true, would not prove that we do, but that the heathen do not, pay divine honors to images. He cites various authorities, Christian and heathen, to prove that it is not the brass and gold and silver, when fashioned into a statue, that the heathen worship, but that through the statue or image they worship the invisible gods; that is, they worship the image as the visible representation of the invisible divinity. This is, no doubt, in some respects, the actual fact; nobody pretends that they worship precisely the material statue, but the numen or god, the prayers, invocations, incantations, and the other ceremonies of the consecration of the statue by the priests compelled to enter the statue and take up his abode in it. But to this image, which for them contains the god, the heathen offer sacrifices and other acts of worship which are due to God alone, which makes all the difference in the world, though we have no doubt that the type copied, perverted, corrupted, and travestied in heathen worship is the Catholic type; as all heathenism is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the true religion, or as Protestantism is a corruption, perversion, or travesty of the Catholic Church.

The heathen images and pictures represent no absent reality, and are not memorials of an absent truth, like our sacred images and pictures; and the heathen, then, can honor only the material substance or the supposed indwelling numen or daemon. The gods they are supposed to bring nigh, represent, or render visible, are either purely imaginary, or evil spirits; hence the Scripture tells us that "all the gods of the heathen are devils." And finally, to these idols, which are nothing but wood and stone, brass and silver, or gold, which represent, if anything, demons or devils, the heathen pay divine honors; while we simply honor and respect images and pictures of our Lord and his saints for the sake of the originals, or the worth to which they are related. Here is a difference which we should suppose even our Protestant doctor capable of perceiving and recognizing.

The preacher forgets that what is denied by the tract is, that we pay divine honors to sacred images and pictures, and cites ample authority to prove that we do not pay divine honors to them or through them. We offer them no sacrifices, and we offer them no prayers or praises, even as symbols or as memorials of a worth they represent. They are never the media through which we honor that worth; but we honor them for the sake of the worth to which they are related, as the pious son honors the picture of his mother, the patriot the picture of the father of his country, or the lover the portrait of his mistress. The respect we pay them springs from one of the deepest and purest principles of human nature, and can be condemned only by those who hold that there is nothing good in nature, and condemn as evil and only evil whatever is natural.

The minister thinks that, even should enlightened and intelligent Catholics understand the question as explained by the catechism and defined by the Council of Trent, yet ignorant Catholics may not; and with them the honors paid to images and pictures actually degenerate into idolatry. He asks:

"But how in this respect do the people of modern Italy differ from those of ancient and heathen Italy? Do the practices of the people there correspond to the doctrines of the theologians, or have they, as of old time, 'bettered the instruction?' Do they pay no special veneration, as if there were some special virtue in the image itself, to those images that are reputed to bleed or sweat, or to the pictures that wink? If it was only as a guide of the thoughts toward the person represented that the image or picture served, then one image would serve as well as another, except that those in which the skill and genius of the artist had most excelled to represent in touching and vivid portraiture the object of the worship, might be preferred above ruder and coarser works. But as I have passed from church to church in those lands in which the Roman system has had unlimited opportunity to work itself out into practice, and have 'beheld the devotions' of the people, I have seen certain statues frequented by a multitude of worshippers, and visited by pilgrims from afar, who had come to bow down before them, and hung with myriads of votive offerings—waxen effigies of arms and legs and other members that had been healed in consequence of prayers to that particular image. And one fact, which I did not then appreciate the bearing of, was constantly observed by myself and my companion—that these objects of special worship and veneration were never works of superior art, but commonly rude, and sometimes even grotesque. The inexpressibly beautiful and touching statue by Bernini, of the Virgin holding upon her knees the body of the dead Jesus, is in the crypt of St. Peter's, and admiring critics go down to study it by torchlight. But the image which is adored is a grimy bronze idol above it in the nave of St. Peter's, which is so venerated as the statue of that apostle that the toes of the extended foot have been actually kissed away by the adorations of the faithful."

It is very evident that the preacher, whatever opportunities he may have had, knows very little of the Catholic people in general, or of the Italian people in particular, and his guesses would deserve more respect if made in relation to his own people. Protestants have no distinctive worship which can be offered to God alone, and are therefore very poor judges of what they may see going on before their eyes among a Catholic people. The Church is responsible only for the faith she teaches and the practices she enjoins, approves, or permits. If the people depart from this faith and abuse these practices in their practical devotion, the fault, since she takes away no one's freedom, is theirs, not hers. The worship that Catholics render to God, the honor they pay to the saints, and the respect they entertain for sacred images, differs not, as all worship with Protestants must, simply as more or less, but in kind, and not even a Protestant community can be found so ignorant as not to be able to distinguish between an image or a picture and the saint or person intended to be represented by it. For the many years we lived as a Protestant we never met any one of our brethren who mistook his mother's portrait for his mother herself, or the statue of a distinguished statesman for the statesman himself. Who ever mistakes the equestrian statue of George Washington in Union Square for George Washington on horseback, or confounds Andrew Jackson himself with Mill's ugly equestrian statue of him in one of the squares of Washington? Who could mistake the bronze horse on which the image of the old General is placed, and which you fear every moment is going to tilt over backward, for a real horse? Well, my dear doctor, however ignorant these Italian people may be whom you see kneeling before an image or a picture of the Madonna, they know more of the doctrines of the Gospel, more of God, and of man's duties and relations to him, more of his proper worship, than the most enlightened non-Catholic community that exists or ever existed on the earth. They may not know as much of error against faith and piety, of false theories and crude speculations as non-Catholics; but they know more of Christianity, more of what Christianity really is, what it teaches, and what it exacts of the faithful, than the wisest and most learned of your sectarian ministers, not even excepting yourself.

With regard to bleeding, sweating, or winking pictures, if you find people believing in them, you will never find among Catholics any who believe that they bleed, sweat, or wink by any virtue that is in the picture itself; but that the phenomenon is a miracle, which God works by the saint pictured. You may doubt the miracle, but not reasonably, unless on the ground that the evidence in the case is insufficient. Whoever believes in God believes in the possibility of miracles, and there is nothing more miraculous in a picture of the Madonna winking, sweating, or bleeding, than there was in Balaam's ass speaking and rebuking his master. It is simply a question of fact. If the proofs are conclusive, the fact is to be believed; if insufficient, no one is bound to believe it.

If you find the people flocking to a particular image or picture and bringing to it their votive offerings, it certainly is not, as the preacher takes notice, on account of its merit as a work of art; for the Italian people, with all their love and exquisite taste for art, do not, like so many non-Catholics, confound artistic culture with religious culture; nor is it because they hold that there is any hidden virtue in that particular image or picture itself, but because the saint whose it is, has or is believed to have specially favored those who have invoked him before it. They may or may not be mistaken as to the fact, but the principle, on which the special devotion to our Lady or a saint before a particular shrine is a correct one; and there is in the practice no special honor to the image or picture for its own sake, and consequently nothing necessarily superstitious or idolatrous.

Even if, as there is no reason to believe, the statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's at Rome, and which the preacher calls a "grimy bronze idol," was originally, as he tells us some say it was, a statue of Jupiter, the honor paid to it by the faithful would not be paid to Jupiter, while intended to be paid to St. Peter. But the toes of the image have been worn away by the kisses of the worshippers; and do not these kisses prove that Catholics adore the image? The heathen adore their gods by kissing the feet of their statues; and when Catholics kiss the feet of the images of their saints, how can it be said that they do not worship or adore images as the heathen do? The heathen use incense in the worship of idols; Moses prescribes incense, and the Jews use it in their worship of the true God; therefore the Jews are idolaters! The preacher forgets that what the tract declares to be dishonest is the accusation that Catholics pay divine worship, that is, the worship due to God alone, to images and pictures, as the heathen do. To kiss the feet of the statue of St. Peter, from love and devotion to the saint himself, the prince of the apostles, on whom our Lord founded his church, is not to pay divine worship to the image, nor even to Peter himself. Were we so happy as to find ourselves at St. Peter's in Rome, we are quite sure that we should kneel before the statue of St. Peter, and kiss its feet, running the risk of its having been once a statue of Jupiter, and we should do it as a proper method of expressing our love and veneration for the great apostle, and as simply and innocently as the mother kisses the carefully preserved portrait of her beloved son slain in battle for his faith or his country. As to using the forms used by the heathen to express affection or devotion, if proper in themselves, we have as little scruple as we have in using the language which our ancestors used in the worship of Woden or Thor, in our prayers and praises to the One Ever-living and True God.

3. The sermon next takes up the false accusation that Catholics pay divine worship to the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:

"Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the Saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ—when the Council of Trent declares that it is simply useful to ask their intercession in order to obtain favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer—

"When 'asking their prayers and influence with God,' is exactly of the same nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of one another?"

The preacher says, "At the outset let me remark, that the question what Roman Catholics do is not conclusively answered by quoting what the Council of Trent declares." This supposes that the same rule must be applied to Catholics, who have an authoritative church, that is applicable to non-Catholics, who have none, or to people among whom every one believes according to his own private judgment, and does what is right in his own eyes. But this is not permissible. Our faith is taught and defined by authority, and to know what we as Catholics believe or do, you must be certain what the church authoritatively teaches or prescribes. We cannot go contrary to that and be Catholics. No doubt Catholics may depart from the faith of the church, and disobey her precepts; but when they obstinately persist in doing so, they cease to be Catholics in faith and practice, and their belief or their practice is of no account in judging what is or is not Catholic doctrine or practice. They who believe or do anything contrary to what is declared by the Council of Trent, are pro tanto non-Catholics. To know what is Catholic faith and Catholic practice, you have only to consult the standards, of the Catholic Church—not every individual Catholic, as you must every individual Protestant when you wish to ascertain what is Protestant opinion and practice. Our standards speak for themselves; and in determining what Catholicity enjoins or allows, you must consult them, and them only.

Mr. Bacon and his brethren have as free access to our standards as we ourselves have, and they must remain under the charge of dishonestly misrepresenting us, or prove by our standards that the church offers or authorizes or does not forbid her children from offering divine worship to the Blessed Virgin. Their surmises, their conjectures, their inferences from what they see among Catholics, but do not understand, must be thrown out as inadmissible testimony. There are the standards: if they sustain you, well and good; if not, you are convicted, and judgment must go against you. This is the case presented by the tract, and which Mr. Bacon and his friends are to meet fairly and squarely.

Now, the tract shows from the standards, from the Council of Trent, which is plenary authority in the case, that the accusation against Catholics of "putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ," is an accusation so manifestly untrue that no one can honestly make it. Here also is the catechism, which the church teaches all her children. "Q. Does this commandment [the first] forbid all honor and veneration of saints and angels? No; we are to honor them as God's special friends and servants, but not with the honor which belongs to God." The Council of Trent declares that "it is good and useful to ask the saints who reign together with Christ in heaven, to pray for us," "or to ask favors for us from our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour." We ask the saints in heaven, as we ask our friends on earth, to pray for us. Here is the whole principle of the case. The Council of Trent, Sess. 22, c. 3, defines that, "though the church is accustomed to celebrate masses in honor of the saints, yet she teaches they are never to be offered to them, but to God alone." Non tamen illis sacrificium offerri docet, sed Deo soli, qui illos coronavit. Now, with Catholics the distinctively divine worship, the supreme worship due to God alone, and which it would be idolatry to offer to any other, is sacrifice, the highest possible sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Mass, which our priests offer every day on the altar; the one unbloody sacrifice which was offered in a bloody manner on Calvary. This is offered to God alone; all else that is offered to God in worship, prayer, praise, love, veneration, may, in kind at least, be offered to men. We honor the chief magistrate, whether called king or emperor, president or governor; we honor the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us in the church; we pray to or petition rulers and men in authority; we chant the praises of the great and the heroic; we love our country, our family, and friends; we venerate the wise and the good, who, in services to the cause of truth, morals, and religion, prove themselves godlike. That Protestants, who have no sacrifice, no priest, no altar, no victim, should mistake the nature of our cultus sanctorum, is not surprising, for they have nothing in kind to offer God that we do not offer to the saints, especially to the queen of saints, the Blessed Mother of God. But this is their fault, not ours; for it is easy for them to know—for our standards tell them so—that we as Catholics place the supreme act of worship in the sacrifice of the Mass—holding that only God is an adequate offering to God, and that the sacrifice of the Mass is never offered to the saints or to any but God alone. There is a marked difference between our cultus sanctorum and that with which men like Mr. Bacon, of Brooklyn, seek to identify it. The heathen offered sacrifices, the highest form of worship they had, to their idols, their demigods and heroes; we offer the highest worship which we have—and we have it only through God's goodness—to the one, living, true God only. This proves that the accusation against Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin and the saints, as objects of worship, in the place of God, is a false accusation, so well known or so easily known to be false, that no one of ordinary intelligence can honestly make it.

But the preacher supposes that Catholics, in other respects, put them in the place of God. This is impossible. Catholics hold that the saints, with the Blessed Virgin at their head, are men and women—creatures whom God has made, has redeemed with his own blood, and has elevated, sanctified, and glorified by his grace, and therefore they cannot identify them with him or substitute them for him. We hold that Mary is the Mother of Christ, and that he is her Lord as well as ours, and that it is through his merits alone, applied beforehand, that she was conceived without original stain; and can anybody, so believing, mistake her for her Son, in any respect put her in his place, or assign to her his mediatorial work? The very fears expressed by our Protestant friends that we do or are liable to do so, prove that even they are able to discriminate between her and her Son; why not then we?

The reverend gentleman continues:

"We are invited to several inquiries. First: Is it true that the prayers that are offered by Roman Catholics to departed saints, and especially to that holy woman whom we with them in all generations unite to call the blessed, are only of such a nature as we might offer to a fellow-Christian here upon the earth in soliciting his prayers in our behalf? Secondly: Are these supplications only for favor and influence, or are they for the direct gift of blessing and salvation? Do they put Mary into the place of Christ, the one Mediator between God and man; making of the All-Merciful Saviour who inviteth all to come unto him, an inaccessible object of dread and terror, whom we dare not approach except through the mediation of Mary? Do they ascribe to her the glory due to Christ, the only name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved? Do they profess faith in her alone for salvation? Do they put the saints in the place of the Holy Ghost, by supplicating from them directly the divine gift of holiness and the renewal of the sinful heart?"

We have answered these questions by anticipation. It is probable that Catholics believe somewhat more distinctly and more firmly in "the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus," than do the sects, and are less likely to forget it, seeing that all their practical devotions, public and private, the great honors given to Mary and the saints are founded on it and tend directly to keep us from forgetting it. Catholics do not pray to Mary because they regard the All-merciful Saviour as inaccessible, or as an object of dread and terror; nor because she comes in between them and him, represents him, or enables them to approach him through her, as is evident from the fact that we not unfrequently directly beseech him to grant that she and other saints may pray for us. We honor her as the mother of God in his human nature. We pray to her to pray to him for us, not only because she is our mother as well as his, but because she is dear to her Son our Lord, and he delights to honor her by granting her requests. For a like reason we invoke the saints, that is, ask them to pray for us. We must then be more ignorant and stupid than even our sectarian ministers believe us, if, in praying to them because as his friends they are dear to him, we substitute them for him from whom what we seek can alone come. If we believe they themselves give it, why do we ask them to pray him to grant it? Cannot our acute and ingenious doctor see that the invocation of saints renders the error he supposes Catholics fall into utterly impossible in the case of the most ignorant Catholic, and that it tends to fix the mind and the heart directly on the fact that every good and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights? Can he not see that the intercession we invoke is a clear confession of the truth he thinks it obscures or obliterates? If we think the good comes from them, why do we ask them to intercede with Christ to bestow it? Why not ask it of them? But is it true, as the tract affirms, that we ask nothing of Mary and the saints in heaven that it would be improper to ask of our fellow-Christian? This is not precisely what the tract asserts. It asserts that asking their prayers and influence is exactly of the same nature, that is, the same in principle, with what Christians do when they ask the pious prayers of one another. To this the preacher replies:

"I hold here a volume of 800 pages, almost every one of which contains an answer to these questions, so far as I honestly read it, in the affirmative. It is The Glories of Mary, by St. Alphonsus Liguori, approved by John, Archbishop of New-York. I scarcely know where to begin quoting, or to cease.

"'O Mary, sweet refuge of miserable sinners, assist me with thy mercy. Keep far from me my infernal enemies, and come thyself to take my soul and present it to my eternal Judge.' 'All the mercies ever bestowed upon men have come through Mary.' 'Mary is called the gate of heaven, because no one can enter heaven if he does not pass through Mary, who is the door of it.' 'As we have access to the eternal Father only through Jesus Christ, so we have access to Jesus Christ only through Mary.'

"'Mary is the peacemaker between sinners and God.' 'My Mother Mary, to thy hands I commit the cause of my eternal salvation. To thee I consign my soul; it was lost, but thou must save it.' 'Thou art the advocate, the mediatrix of reconciliation, the only hope, and the most secure refuge of sinners.' 'I place in thee all my hopes of salvation.' 'She is the advocate of the world and the true mediatrix between God and man.' 'Blessed is he who clings with love and confidence to those two anchors of salvation, Jesus and Mary.' 'Deliver me from the burden of my sins; dispel the darkness of my mind; banish earthly affections from my heart.' 'O Lady, change us from sinners to saints.'"

Tastes differ, and not every Catholic would employ every expression used by St. Alphonsus in his Glories of Mary; but none of these expressions convey to the Catholic mind what they do to the Protestant mind; for Catholics have a key to their meaning in their faith in the incarnation. The strongest of them is justified by the relation of Mary to that great mystery in which centres and from which radiates the whole of Christianity. From her was taken that flesh, that human nature, in which God redeems and saves us; and being taken from her, she has a relation to God, our Saviour, and consequently to our redemption and salvation, which no other woman, no other creature, has or can have. This relation explains the passages in the Litany of our Lady of Loretto, and those passages of St. Alphonsus and other Catholic writers which assert that all mercies and graces come from God through her. They all come from God in his human nature; and as that nature was taken from her, they must in some sense come through her. They come through her, because they come from God as born of her. They also come through her, because God, her divine Son, who gives them, loves her as his mother, and delights to honor with the highest honor a creature can receive; he therefore confers the favors mortals pray for only through her intercession. But as all the special honor done to her is done only in consequence of her relation as his mother, the higher we carry that honor the more clear, distinct, and energetic our conviction of the fact of the incarnation, and the more impossible it must be for us to put her in the place of the Incarnate Word, or to substitute her for her Son, who is the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. To do so would be not only to rob him of his glory, but to deny her title to that very honor given to her as the mother of God. Catholics are not capable of anything so illogical and absurd.

The key to the other expressions objected in St. Alphonsus is in this same relation to the incarnation and the confidence of the Saint in the power and efficacy of Mary's prayers or intercession for us with her divine Son. He confides to Mary, leaves in her hands the cause of his eternal salvation, as the client confides his cause to his advocate or counsel. "My soul," he says, "was lost, but thou must save it"—by thy intercession with thy Son, who will deny thee nothing thou dost ask, because thou canst never ask but what he inspires thee to ask, and what is agreeable to his will, and he delights to honor thee before heaven and earth by granting thy requests. In the same way understand the expressions, "the advocate," "the mediatrix of reconciliation," and all the rest. The term mediatrix is not the best possible, because it is liable to mislead not a Catholic, but a non-Catholic, who believes little in the incarnation, and refuses to interpret the language of Catholics by the official teaching of their church. The Catholic always knows in what sense it is said, and for him the explanations are never necessary; still less are they necessary for Him who sees and knows the thoughts and intents of the heart before they are even formed. It is the duty of non-Catholics to consult the standards of the church and to explain what seems to them difficult or inexact in the warm and energetic expressions of Catholic love and devotion by them; and it is not honest to found a charge against Catholics on such expressions without having done so. The preacher continues:

"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits of departed men and women."

Yes, you have the answer such as your minister gives; and we have shown that his answer misinterprets facts which he does not understand; that it refuses to interpret them by the key furnished in the official teaching of the church; that it contradicts itself, and proves, if anything, the falsity of the very charge it undertakes to establish, and therefore clears neither him nor you, if you accept it, from the charge of dishonestly bringing false accusations against the church of God.

"Is IT HONEST to assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin—when an 'indulgence,' according to her universally received doctrine, was never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case whatever, any permission to commit the least sin; and when an indulgence has no application whatever to sin until after sin has been repented of and pardoned?"

The preacher has the air of conceding that this charge is unfounded, and says, "If it is made, it does not appear to be sustained yet he maintains that indulgences really remit the punishment due to sins committed after the indulgence has been bought and paid for; for they are alleged to preserve the recipient in grace till death, in spite of subsequent sins." And he cites the case of Tetzel, in the sixteenth century, in proof He adduces what purports to be a form of absolution published by Tetzel, and offered for sale in the market-places of Germany. The form of absolution alleged is manifestly a forgery, and a very stupid forgery; and besides, absolution and indulgences are very different things, and the indulgence affects only a certain temporary punishment that remains to be expiated after the absolution is given or the eternal guilt is pardoned, and is rather a commutation than a remission of even that temporary punishment, which, if not commuted or borne here, must be expiated hereafter in purgatory. There is no form of indulgence; there are conditions of gaining an indulgence; but there is no certificate given to the effect that we have obtained it. If we have sincerely complied with the conditions prescribed by the pope, we gain it; but whether we have gained it neither we nor the church can know in this life without a special revelation. Every Catholic knows that to offer money for it would argue a disposition on his part that would render it impossible, while he retained that disposition, to gain an indulgence. No one can gain an indulgence while in a state of sin, and hence indulgences are not at any price profitable things to purchase. That Tetzel exaggerated the virtue of indulgences was asserted by Luther and his friends; but that he offered them for sale in the market-places, was never, we believe, even pretended until after his death—was and never has been proved. Luther and his friends complained that he was causing a scandal, and procured his arrest and imprisonment in a convent of his order, where he died two years after, without the matter, owing to the troubles of the times, even undergoing a judicial investigation. As for Luther's own testimony, in a case touching his hatred against Rome, it is of no account.

"The only sense," continues the preacher, "in which the Roman Church has ever sold licenses for crime, has been in this, of announcing (not in America, in this century) a tariff of cash-prices at which (with contrition) all evil consequences of certain sins, whether in this world or the world to come, would be cancelled. The price-current in Germany in the sixteenth century, ranged as follows: for polygamy, six ducats; for sacrilege and perjury, nine ducats; for murder, eight ducats. In Switzerland, at the same period, the price was for infanticide, four francs; for parricide or fratricide, one ducat."

This seems to us quite enough. The Catholic will perceive that our learned friend is not very well posted on Catholic matters. He evidently confounds sacramental absolution with indulgences, and indulgences with the dispensations which the church grants in particular cases, not from the law of God, nor the law of nature, but from her own ecclesiastical law; and supposes that the fees paid to the chancery for the necessary legal documents in the various causes that come before it, are the fees paid by the faithful for indulgences and the pardon of their sins. [Footnote 53] A man who speaks of matters of which he knows nothing is liable to say some very absurd things. Nevertheless, the preacher says expressly, and we doubt not means to concede the point made by the tract, that indulgences are not licenses to commit sin, but he has labored to make his concession as little offensive to his Protestant brethren as possible. Still he concedes it. "I think, therefore," he says, "that the author of this tract is right in claiming that it is not just to assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin." No, she does no such thing, she only "intimates beforehand her willingness, if such and such crimes are committed, to make it all right with the malefactor both in this world and the world to come, for penitence—and CASH." He who should offer cash to pay for absolution would receive for answer, "Thy money perish with thee!"

[Footnote 53: For a full proof of the forgery of the above passage in the book called Tax-Book of the Roman Chancery, see Bishop England's Letters to Dr. Fuller, Works of Bishop England, vol. iii. p. 13.]

"Is IT HONEST to repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priests to pardon their sins—such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church—when any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every catechism and work on Catholic theology?"

The preacher thinks it is very honest, because, if the church prohibits and punishes it as simony, it is very evident that it sometimes happens. If the offence had never been committed, the church would never have had occasion to legislate on the matter. It was argued that for a long time the crime of parricide was unknown at Rome, because there was no law prohibiting and punishing it. This is his answer, and a proof, we suppose, of his candor of which he boasts, of his readiness to die rather than knowingly repeat a false charge against the church! The real accusation against the church, which the tract denies can be honestly made, is that Catholics are required to pay, or that the priest can lawfully exact pay, for the pardon or absolution he pronounces in the sacrament of penance. It does not necessarily deny that the thing may sometimes be done, but, if so, it is unlawfully, is a sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, etc. The sin of simony, in one form or another, has in the history of the church often been committed, and those who committed it are, in general, favorites with Protestant historians, who seldom fail to brand as haughty tyrants and spiritual despots the noble and virtuous popes who struggled energetically against it, and did their best to correct or guard against the evil. But honest men will not hold the church responsible for the misdeeds of unprincipled men, which she prohibits and exerts all the power of her discipline to prevent and punish. The case is too plain to need argument. Penance, the church teaches, is a sacrament, of which absolution is a part, and to sell any sacrament or part thereof is simony, a grievous sin; and though there is no sin that may not have been committed, yet the fact of a priest, however depraved, demanding pay for sacramental pardon or absolution is not known to have ever occurred. The church prohibits it, indeed, but only in prohibiting simony, and we are not aware that she has ever passed any special law against this particular species of simony, and therefore the argument of the preacher falls to the ground, and for aught he shows, it is true to the letter that the thing is unheard of.

"Is IT HONEST to persist in saying that Catholics believe that their sins are forgiven merely by the confession of them to the priest, without a true sorrow for them, or a true purpose to quit them—when every child finds the contrary distinctly and clearly stated in the catechism, which he is obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments? Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any Catholic catechism."

"Nothing," says the preacher, "could be more conclusive than this logic, if we could constantly presume that the belief and practice of the people always coincide exactly with the teaching of the catechism." If the coincidence were perfect, there would be no sins to confess, no need of the sacrament of penance, and no question as to the condition of ghostly absolution or pardon could ever be raised. But as the preacher finds nothing to object to under this head in the teaching or official practice of the church, we must presume that he finds the logic of the tract, whatever may be the deceptions, if any, practised upon the priest, is quite conclusive, and he certainly concedes quite enough to show that the accusation against the church which the tract repels, cannot be honestly repeated. We would remind the preacher that no one is forced against his will to go to confession, and the very fact of one's going is presumptive proof of sincere sorrow for his sins, and a resolution, weaker or stronger, God helping him, to forsake them. Why should he seek to deceive the priest, when he knows that if he seeks to do so, he would not only receive no benefit from the absolution, but would commit the grievous sin of sacrilege by profaning the sacrament?

"Is IT HONEST to say that Catholics believe that man, by his own power, can forgive sin—when the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him, according to these words, 'Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?' St John xx. 23."

The preacher has offered no reply, or, if he has, we have overlooked it, to this grave accusation; perhaps he has none to make. The journals, however, attempt a reply, the purport of which is, that, though the tract states truly the official teaching of the church, yet Catholics practically believe, as every one knows who has had intercourse with them, that it is the priest, not God, who they believe pardons sin. This, too, is in substance the reply of Mr. Bacon throughout. The tract states the doctrine of the church correctly on all the points made, but then that, it is pretended, is not the doctrine of the Catholic people, the practical doctrine of Catholics, and gives no clue to the practical workings of the Roman system—a clear confession that they really have nothing to object to Catholic doctrine and practice, though they have much to object to in what is no doctrine or teaching or practice of the church. The reason of this, we suppose, is, that they have no conception of the church. Now, we think it is very likely that there are many Catholics who cannot define very scholastically the distinction between efficient cause and instrumental or medial cause; but put the question to the most ignorant Catholic you can find. "Do you believe the priest as a man in confession pardons your sins?" as soon as he gets hold of what you are driving at, he will answer: "No; he pardons or absolves them as a priest." This answer means that the priest does not absolve by a virtue in him as a man, but by virtue of his priestly office, to which he is appointed by the Holy Ghost; that is, as the minister, or as the tract says, the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ. All Catholics unhappily do not conform their life to their faith; but you will find that the faith of the people is that of the church, that which the church officially teaches; and there is no room for the distinction which non-Catholic ministers and journals, try, as their best resort in self-vindication, to make between Catholicity in the formularies of the church and the Catholicity that works practically in the faith and lives of the Catholic people, whether learned or unlearned. All this talk about the practical workings of the system is moonshine, at least outside of the record, to which no Catholic is bound to reply. We are required to believe and defend only what the church teaches and requires of her children:

8. The tract concludes with the question,

"Is IT HONEST to make these and many other similar charges against Catholics—when they detest and abhor such false doctrines more than those do who make them, and make them too, without ever having read a Catholic book, or taken any honest means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church really teaches? AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY."

In spite of all that sectarian preachers and journals can say, the unprejudiced and fair-minded American will answer, to each question the tract puts, No! it is not honest, but gravely dishonest; for every one is bound to judge Catholics by the standards of the church, open to all the world. And these manifestly disprove the accusations.

We have attempted no defence in this article of our holy religion itself. We have only attempted to show our Protestant accusers that their efforts to prove themselves honest, in their false charges against the church and her faithful children, are unsuccessful. They have not successfully impeached the tract in a single instance, nor vindicated themselves from a single one of its charges; nor can they do it. Many things may be said against the immaculate spouse of Christ; the daughters of the uncircumcised may call her black, may rail against her, and call her all manner of hard names; but she stands ever in her loveliness, all pure, and dear to her Lord, who loves her, and gave his life for her, and dear to the heart of every one of her loving children, and all the dearer from the foul aspersions cast upon her by the ignorant, the foolish, and the malicious.

We have not taken much notice of the professions of candor and independence of the preacher; for we have never much esteemed professions which are contradicted by deeds; nor are we easily won by fine things said of individual Catholics by one who in the same breath calumniates the holy Catholic Church. Few sermons have we read that show a more decided hostility to our religion than these of the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Brooklyn, which are unredeemed from their low sectarian character by any depth of learning, extent of historical research, force of logic, richness of imagination, flow of eloquence, or sparkle of wit. We have found them very commonplace and dull; we have found it a dull affair to read and reply to them; and we fear that our readers will find our reply itself very dull, for dulness is contagious.

Magas; or, Long Ago.

A Tale Of The Early Times.

Chapter IX.

"She is bewitched, my lord," said her attendants to Magas, as he stood the next day by the bedside of Chione, and she knew him not. "She is bewitched. Chloe and two or three others heard the spell muttered just before she fell."

Magas looked incredulously, yet half-believing what they said. "Why, who can have bewitched her?"

"The Christians, my lord; there were many present, and they came on purpose. They failed the first time, but they did it the next."

Magas gazed at Chione, as she lay, for the most part insensible, yet at intervals uttering incoherent words which alarmed them all. He said softly, "Chione?"

She started up and gazed fiercely at him. "Begone!" she said, "you have lost me my soul for ever; begone!" And she struck him a violent blow.

"It is ever thus, my lord," said an attendant consolingly, "when people are thus attacked by the furies; they hate those most that they loved the best."

"What makes you think the Christians have bewitched her?"

"They are practising magic all over, and playing all kinds of tricks throughout the country."

"But why should they attack your mistress?"

"Why, my lord—" And the woman hesitated.

"Well, what?"

"Well, my lord, they do say she was once one of them; and when any one leaves them, they never forgive them—they torment them for ever."

"Pshaw! what nonsense is this?"

"I did not make the story, my lord; more than one says so."

"Let those in this house beware of ever saying it again then, unless they are fond of being scourged." And Magas turned away. He was but half satisfied, however. He remembered the meeting with the bishop, as he had afterward discovered him to be. He knew, too, that Lady Damaris was accounted a Christian, and that Chione always shrank from naming her. The Christians had a great name for magic: but Dionysius and the Lady Damaris were of the highest families. Magas paced for many hours the sacred grove to which he had wandered, then suddenly betook him to the bishop's residence.

He was admitted, courteously received; but it was some time before he returned the bishop's greeting. Dionysius waited his pleasure with the courtesy for which he was remarkable.

At length Magas said: "I cannot think you have done it."

"Done what, my son?"

"Bewitched Chione; made her mad."

"Is Chione ill?"

"She is very ill, she is raving and insensible by turns."

"Your words seemed just now to imply I was concerned in her illness."

"Her attendants think—think—tell me, noble Dionysius, is it true that Chione was ever a Christian?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because it is important that the Christians should know that, if they have bewitched her in revenge for her leaving them, they must undo the spell at once, or brave my vengeance."

"This much, at least, I may tell you—the Christians have not bewitched her."

"Yet she fainted at some words uttered close to her, and that was the second interruption of the evening."

"My son, you must not make me responsible for the interruptions; I was not present at your meeting."

"No, but some Christians were; that has been ascertained."

"Even so; each one must answer for himself."

"You did not send them there?"

"I did not!"

"Now, will you tell me, was Chione ever a Christian?"

"I would rather that she answer for herself."

"She is not in a state to answer for herself, and your answer may prevent some suffering; if she was never a Christian, those slaves shall be scourged who affirm she was."

Magas had hit on the right method, as he intended; the bishop answered at once: "Spare the poor slaves, my son. I baptized Chione myself."

"Baptized?"

"Yes, admitted her within the pale of the church by washing away all sin; by that she became a Christian."

"How long ago?"

"About fifteen months before she was missing from Corinth."

When did she leave your society?"

"I suppose when she left Corinth; I have not spoken with her since."

"Is her present illness connected with her Christianity?"

"How can I possibly tell, my son? I have not seen her; mental agitation may have caused it, and her leaving her religion may have caused that; how can I tell?"

"But has magic been used upon her?"

"Not by Christians, decidedly; and I should think, not at all. Her brain is probably over-worked, and she has been suffering from over-excitement: these will frequently cause derangement."

"And you think religion has nothing to do with it?"

"I did not say that, my son; to profess one thing and believe another must occasion uneasiness, until the conscience is dead. I should say, from your account, that Chione is suffering from mental disturbance, brought on by her unfaithfulness to her own convictions. Once a Christian, she must still feel its influence; and unwilling to yield to its teachings, she writhes under its power."

"That is it, that is what her nurses say; she is under the power of the Christians—bewitched by them. Now, that spell must be undone."

"If it is in her own mind, caused by her own act, no one can undo it, as long as her will remains perverse."

"What does this mean?" said Magas.

"It means this, my friend: Christianity links the soul to the living God from which it sprang. To become a Christian is not a myth, not a mere intellectual conviction, not an adoption of philosophical tenets: it is an act, a solemn act of surrender; it is an acknowledgment that the world has been disturbed by influences foreign to the true God; it is a renunciation of those influences, a solemn reunion of the soul with the Eternal Soul, the Creator, the Upholder, the Redeemer; it is positive. A soul so linked by her own free consent, placed under influences unknown to those outside, must, so long as conscience speaks at all, suffer from the conflict she is undergoing, in breaking loose from a personal intercourse with her Maker, as also from a revelation of truth, beauty, and goodness, to plunge anew into the darkness of human guesses."

"You speak in enigmas, my lord! I presume one must be initiated to understand you. Meantime, tell me, can you do anything for Chione?"

"I am somewhat of a physician, although no professor of magic. I will see your patient, if it will give you comfort."

Magas bethought him: the visit of a Christian bishop to his house would be too remarkable. What was he to do? Suddenly he said: "What could possess Chione to make herself a Christian?"

"I believe it was the love of truth and beauty. She sought a key to the mysteries of life, and Christianity offered her one."

"And yet she left it!"

"It is by no means clear that she has left it, otherwise than by act. She is an unfaithful member, but she still believes, or it would have no power over her."

"I wonder is it religion that is making her so ill? My Lord Dionysius, among her former companions, do you know one whose discretion you could trust to take care of her for a day or two, who would be competent to discover whether Christianity is disturbing her?"

"I know an amanuensis who might perhaps be willing to oblige you; we will see." They left the house by a side-door. The bishop led the way through a narrow path for some distance, till they came to a villa. Here he made a signal at the gate; it was opened by an old servitor, who bowed profoundly as he admitted him and his companion. Dionysius whispered a word in his ear, and the old man tottered on before to a side entrance, which he left open. They entered, and very shortly another door opened into a small library. A lady was writing there; they saluted her, and Magas recognized Lotis.

The bishop quickly made known the purport of his visit, and Lotis willingly offered her services. Magas, however, demurred. "Is it possible," said he; "are you really a Christian?"

"I have that happiness," replied Lotis.

"Why, how can it be? how is it that lofty minds like yours and Chione's can ally yourselves with such a drivelling set?"

Lotis smiled as she observed, "I think, Lord Magas, that the illustrious Dionysius, who stands beside you, will scarcely feel complimented."

Magas blushed and apologized. "Forgive me," he said; "I am so fairly confounded to-day, I do not know what I am saying."

Dionysius said smilingly, "You do not know what Christianity is, and therefore stand excused beforehand. Do you wish Lotis to accompany you to Chione?"

"The more, as I think she will scarcely be suspected of—" Magas hesitated. The bishop filled up the gap for him—"of belonging to such a drivelling set. No; and Chione even does not know it; so your secret will be doubly safe. You may confide in Lotis entirely."

Chapter X.

Lotis took her place by the bedside of her friend, but she found her situation almost a sinecure. Though Chione did not recognize her, she was very uneasy in her presence. "Take those large black eyes away from me," she would say. Finally Lotis found herself reduced to watching in the next room, as Magas still desired her to stay and direct proceedings; and to beguile the hours, she occupied herself in what had become almost a business with her, in transcribing the gospels and apostolic papers for the use of the different churches. Magas often visited her, and would have shared her watch, had she permitted it; but this she would not hear of; so he was obliged to be content with frequent visits to inquire after the progress of Chione, and by degrees to study the parchments on which Lotis was engaged.

Ashamed to manifest the interest he felt, he took them to his own apartment, and studied first, then secretly copied the writings with his own hand. Weeks went on; Chione's health improved, but her insanity did not pass away. Lotis proposed she should be removed to a dwelling in the neighborhood of Lady Damaris' abode, and be there tended.

"Two influences are about her here," she said, "counteracting each other. There all will be in unison." Magas assented. "I am no longer afraid of Christians," he said; "but how any one once believing what is here written," continued he, producing the gospel he had written out with his own hand—" how any one, once believing, can fall away, is a mystery. I would give all my possessions to have the faith, the confidence in God, herein described. Faith seems to mean the creature's power in God, derived from God. Could I once feel that God is my Father in the sense the gospel has it, I would bid adieu to philosophy for ever, and be at rest."

"Then you are not angry that Chione is a Christian?" said Lotis.

"I am angry that she has acted a lie, and imposed upon me," he said.

"It was love of you that constrained her. Forgive her, Magas."

"Love of me! Did she not know I love truth? I can never believe her again."

Lotis left the apartment and proceeded to superintend the removal of Chione.

Magas went to the bishop, to make arrangements for Chione's maintenance; he wished to settle revenues on her ere he departed.

"Depart! are you about to leave Athens, my son?"

"Yes, father; it has become hateful to me, since I no longer love Chione."

"You do not intend to desert her?"

"I leave her in good hands; what can I do more?"

"Her whole being is bound up in you; through you she sinned."

"That is the worst of it; I cannot look at her without feeling that; but yet, I knew not she was a Christian, nor did I know how sublime the Christian faith is. I cannot forgive her for abandoning her faith."

"But you are not a Christian, Magas?"

"No! I am waiting for the manifestation of God. I am going to the apostle who has heard and seen, who works miracles in the name of Jesus; I am going to ask of this Jesus the power of faith."

"What do you mean by the power of faith, Magas?"

"The power of becoming a son of God, of being free, with the freedom of old Merion, who is more free amid his chains than the young worldlings with their power and wealth. Free from my own passions, which master me and blind me; free from false knowledge, which misleads me; free from the power of habit, which enslaves me. I want power to endure that crucifixion which dying to these objects will occasion me. I feel my own nature rebelling against my aspiration, and I want power to conquer it. The apostle says the gospel is power unto salvation, and that power is needed where life must be one combat, as mine must be for the time to come."

Dionysius, too modest to arrogate to himself the gifts which daily experience proved him to possess, of working miracles to attest the power of God, simply said, "The holy apostle Paul is even now at Corinth; you cannot do better than seek him there; I myself will shortly do the same."

Chapter XI.

Two years have passed; such years! Magas has left Athens, has become a Christian—nay, a Christian preacher. His property has been more for others than himself; for he has renounced wealth, pomp, earthly power, to follow the footsteps of that wondrous convert who was brought to Christ by being struck down to earth by excess of light—blinded by glory—by seeing the heavenly vision with the unprepared eyes of earth. By St. Paul confirmed in the faith, Magas was, through the same apostle, set apart for the ministry through the laying on of hands. Magas has so completely changed his nature, his very features seem altered. The young Athenian noble, proud of a long line of ancestry, but seeks to devote his days to the one Master who shares his undivided heart.

Yet he returned to Athens, and his voice was heard by Chione.

All night she listened; in her short slumbers she dreamed of him; In the morning her wandering senses had returned. Lotis entered her room with her breakfast; and the wild light in Chione's eyes had subsided. She looked around; she inquired, "Where am I? Lotis, why are you here?"

"I am here to tend you, dear Chione; you have been ill."

"Ill!" said Chione, passing her hand over her brow; "Ill! I've, had a long, strange dream! Where's Magas?"

"I do not know," said Lotis.

"He was here last night," said Chione. "I heard his voice; all night I watched for him; why did he keep away?"

"I cannot tell you," answered Lotis.

"Cannot tell! Is not this his house? is he not at home?"

"No! this is not his house," said Lotis; "he has been away from Athens, and he left you here to be taken care of. Now you must ask no more questions, but take your breakfast. I will send to Magas to tell him you are better."

Lotis left the room and summoned another attendant, charging her to be careful of her speech, lest the newly returned reason should again fail, she herself sought the bishop to let him know of the change.

It required some care to break to Chione the tidings that she was in the house of the Lady Damaris; that for two years she had been a prey to a most cruel malady of the brain, during which time Lotis had taken every possible care of her; and that Magas had been, during that time, away. Reawakened reason almost tottered again on its throne. Chione's pride was evidently hurt.

"Two years! two years! was that the end of my triumph? Magas! a mad woman! What has Magas been doing?"

"He will tell you that best himself; he will be here shortly."

"Two years! two long years! O Magas!"

......

"They met! But is this Magas? is this Chione? The long, lank hair, eyes almost starting from their sockets; and that form, so shrunken, so bereft of its former beauty, can this be the Venus Urania? And Apollo! will you recognize him in that weather-beaten form, coarsely clad, and mien so humble, though an intellectual manliness still sat upon the brow?

"Is this Magas? the same, and yet so changed? Magas, speak to me."

"You are then recovering at last, Chione?"

"At last! yes! I knew not of my illness till I recovered. Strange thing, this mind is, Magas! I lived on you: you were absent—I died; your voice brought me back to life."

"Nay, you were ill before I left you, Chione. It was a higher voice speaking to you, to which you turned a deaf ear, that caused your illness."

"What mean you?"

"That the remorse you felt for your abandoned faith upset your mental energies. Venus Urania should not have been enacted by a Christian."

"You have discovered my secret then; but I am a Christian no longer."

"Oh! do not say that, Chione; say, rather, you will repent, do penance. Chione, you cannot at will cast away faith. The effect those words produced on you show that you still believe."

"The devils believe and tremble," muttered the unfortunate woman; "yet it is not faith they have."

"But you are not yet a reprobate—are not yet beyond recall. Chione, I, Magas, entreat you, do not lie to your God. You cannot deceive him, and for his power, does not your past illness make you tremble for the future?"

"What means this altered tone, Magas?" said Chione bitterly. "Are you turned against me? Ah! I see how it is! Two years of absence, two years of illness, have done their work. Man's constancy is of a summer day; the winter comes, he freezes with the cold; for the love within no longer glows, no longer sends the blood rushing through the veins with a warmth that defies exterior cold. Some other form fresher than this frame impaired by sickness hath replaced Chione in your heart. You come to bid me farewell. Farewell, Magas."

Deceived by her feigned calmness, Magas rose. "Again, Chione, I entreat you to return to the religion you have abandoned."

"And do penance at the church door in sackcloth and ashes? Is that your meaning? Will you be there to see me beg the prayers of the faithful as they pass in to the mysteries from which I am excluded?"

This was said with an inconceivable mixture of sarcasm and bitterness.

"Love could sweeten even such an act as that," said Magas; "surely, even that is better than apostasy."

"And who are you that dare to twit me with apostasy? False one, wearied of thy old love, seeking another," (here she seized the arm of Magas,) "tell me," she said fiercely, "what is the name of the fair one for whom you abandon me?"

"Why would you know?" asked Magas.

"That I might tear her limb from limb!" said the frenzied woman.

"That is beyond your power, Chione. Him I love sits enthroned in the heavens. I have no earthly love. Chione, farewell. Remember, Magas blesses you—blesses you as he leaves you. You will not see him soon again, for Magas is a Christian priest."

He left her.

No, the energies did not depart as she started to her feet on hearing the last words—"a Christian priest!" "Magas! Oh! had I known, could I have guessed! The love of Magas without losing my religion! Can I regain it? Yes; by penance, Chione, doing penance! Faugh! Chione standing in the cold, clothed in sackcloth, exposed to the derision of the faithful. 'Twould be easy to love, he said. Did he say so? Love must be boiling hot indeed to sweeten such an act as that; and my love, ah! ah! love for religion, such a religion as that, ah! ah! ah!"

The poor woman raved, but alas! there was too much method in her madness. Wilfully she shut out faith; wilfully she turned to hate all that heretofore she had held dear; but she acted for a while with an earthly prudence that deceived those around her.

She staid with the Lady Damaris until she had recovered health and strength, until she had made herself sure of the independence Magas had settled on her. Then she left, and opened a school of philosophy, which was soon filled. Her former reputation did her much service in that respect, and that she had escaped from the enchantments of the Christians, who had tried to destroy her, added to the interest she inspired. She soon recovered her former beauty, and she studied now, studied deeply, how to thwart the Christians, how to demonstrate that whatever was beautiful in their religion they had stolen from the muses; that whatever was mystical came to them from Hindostan, the seat of mysticism; that whatever was reasonable and ethical they had learned from philosophy. It was a splendid success in Athens, that philosophical school of Chione; for it flattered the passions while it shed the grace of eloquence and refinement over them. All beauty, taste, and melody were made to yield their utmost sweetness there. Her disciples were of the rich, the great, the noble. They could practise the elegant course of study alternating with ease that she prescribed: "To enjoy is the aim of existence, refinement, cultivation, a correct system of ethics makes perfect enjoyment. Science gives interest, lifts one above the vulgar. Art ennobles and civilizes, and Athens is still the central point of art, science, and philosophy." So said Chione.

Chapter XII.

"Indeed, Lotis, you must give me more hope than that; you must not bid me despair."

The words were spoken somewhat louder than was intended. They were heard by one who was passing by. The speaker was Magas; the passer-by was Chione. Magas was lamenting over the account he had heard of Chione's continued resistance to grace. Chione applied to the words another meaning; she ascribed them to a passion felt for Lotis, and her heart burned with rage and jealousy.

"Magas was then returned to Athens. What was he doing?" She set spies on his steps. He was often at the bishop's house, often in the Christian assembly; but also often had interviews with Lotis. This fact, which might have been easily explained by the occupation of Lotis, who supplied copies of books, and kept various accounts for the church, was otherwise interpreted by the misled woman, and she resolved on the destruction of Lotis. If she could not regain the love of Magas, at least she would not have a rival. She had influence in the city. Nero's persecution, though but little felt in the colonies, could be brought to bear. Lotis should not live to triumph over her by a Christian marriage. The idea was insupportable.

Up to this point, Chione had kept herself unfettered from human ties since Magas had departed. She had loved Magas, and though many had made her offers of marriage, she could not resolve to accept them. Magas was alike elegant and profound. Who was worthy to succeed him? Athenian after Athenian paid court to her; gay, witty, and attractive to all, Chione accepted none. This was a matter of great wonder in so licentious a city as Athens.

But a greater wonder still was to ensue. A new Roman praetor arrived. A rude barbarian he seemed to the fashionables of Athens: certainly he was not distinguished for refinement, for learning, or for elegance; but it was soon observed that Chione held him enthralled, and, what was more remarkable, that she seemed to favor him.

How it happened, people could hardly tell, but a different spirit seemed animating Athens. The Christians, from being despised were becoming feared, and at length hated. When Nero's edict had been first made known, it made little impression; but gradually a voice was found, to proclaim that there were Christians in Athens practising magic to the detriment of all good citizens.

A few poor slaves were seized and brought before the praetor; they were ruthlessly condemned on acknowledging themselves Christians. People were startled, but poor slaves have few friends, and the matter blew over. Suddenly the praetor grows more religious, decrees foreign to the usual spirit of Athenian government are enacted; a test is instituted, and several free citizens of Athens have to abide the scrutiny; executions follow, and Chione's reputation suffers, for it is currently reported that it is she who instigates the inquiry and persecutes the new sect.

The Roman praetor evidently takes counsel of her. But there comes one concerning whom even he hesitates; a young lady, daughter of a philosopher, one beloved for her private virtues, is brought before the judge. "Sacrifice to the genius of the emperor." "I cannot." "Why not?" "I am a Christian." How often have the words been repeated; they are so simple, yet so fraught with consequence; how many perished under that simple interrogatory! Lotis undergoes it; she is remanded; the praetor seeks to release her; he is sick of his office when it hits upon the young, the innocent, the lovely; the outside interests him, he cannot see the soul. Faith, ever young, has sustained many an aged slave, wrinkled with age; has adorned many a worker embrowned and toil-worn, bearing marks on his frame that his life has not been spent in uselessness; but these excited only a passing interest, if any—they were common people (would that the toiling saints were more common!) they went to their doom, by fire or by the headsman, unmarked by men and unpitied, though Heaven assumed their souls with hymns of joy, dressed them in white garments, crowned them with brilliants, endowed them with perpetual youth and with beauty that never will fade. But here comes a lady. The praetor understands that she has slaves to wait upon her, every luxury attends her; she may lead a life of indolence, if she pleases. These are the exterior signs, the signs that awaken commiseration. The praetor hesitates. Chione does not hesitate. The prisoner is not only a Christian, she is a member of a conspiracy just laid open to Chione's apprehension. She has lived in the city longer than the praetor, she knows its dangers. This Lotis is a dangerous person, she is a personal enemy to Chione; she must die; nay, Chione names the manner of her death; she is to die by fire. The praetor, infatuated by his passion for the guilty woman who prescribes to him the sentence he is to pronounce, submits, gently hinting that he looks for his reward. "Reward!" says Chione to herself, "is not a smile from me reward enough for a barbarian like him?" And in her egotism, she really believes she is speaking the simple truth.

The sentence is pronounced; horror seizes the city; to-morrow the flames are to consume the conspirators, who are many in number; and Lotis is among them; there is no escape.

The ancient bishop contrives, however, to visit his condemned flock, bearing consolation, courage, and, above all, the blessed sacrament, with him. To each and all he addressed himself according to their needs; if he, too, staid a little longer with Lotis than with the others, it arose out of a previous conversation, and because he wished to promote a holy work.

"My daughter, do you know who has stirred up this accusation against you?"

"I rather guess than know it, father. What have I done to draw down Chione's hatred?"

"She is jealous of Magas in your regard. She cannot appreciate the depth of Christian devotedness; she can understand selfish aims alone."

"Poor Chione!"

"Do you, from your heart, forgive her?"

"I have not thought about forgiveness; I pity her too much."

"Do you remember the conversation we had years ago?"

"About laying down my life for her? Father, I do."

"Are you willing to do so now?"

"If I thought it would save her soul, I am more than willing."

"Pray for her, then, my daughter."

......

'Twas a wild shriek that rang through the streets that morning, as Magas arrived just in time to see the procession set forth, to recognize Lotis, to hear Chione's name as the one who had procured her condemnation. "Stop, stop!" he had cried to the Roman soldiery; "stop! It is all a mistake; stop! In a few minutes it will be rectified. Stop for a short time, in the name of all that is holy!" Had Magas donned his patrician's dress and scattered largess, as in times of yore, his words would have been heeded; a few minutes would have been granted. Even now, his air, his manner, his authoritative gestures occasioned a slight pause; but his weather-stained appearance caused him to be considered as a plebeian, and the pause was not long. He flew rather than ran to Chione's abode. "Come," said he, "it seems you are omnipotent in Athens; come and prevent a murder." He dragged her with him to the praetor's house, but the great man was absent. A bright flame lit up the sky! "My God, if we are too late!" he cried. Almost carrying Chione in his arms, Magas hurried through the streets, till they came to a place set apart for the execution. It was already commenced; singing hymns of glory to God, one soul after another departed homeward. Magas paused opposite to Lotis; she made a sign of recognition. Magas turned to Chione. "Are you a devil," he shrieked, "that you have dared to do this?" "Forgive her, Magas, as I forgive her," said the dying Lotis. "Farewell, Chione! Friends we were in youth, and we shall yet meet in heaven." Lotis was gone.

"Meet in heaven! meet in heaven! meet in heaven! I and Lotis meet in heaven! meet in heaven! Magas, tell me, Magas, can it be?"

The brain of Magas was on fire with excitement, and he held a murderess in his arms; but he was a Christian priest, and he answered solemnly:

"God is merciful; Christ died for sinners. Do penance; it may be yet."

Conclusion.

Very many years have passed away, and if the dignity of person is considered, a more solemn martyrdom than the last we have commemorated is to take place. The venerable bishop and his companions, some priests, some laymen, are to lay their heads upon the block—among them Magas. A woman veiled, bearing but few remains of beauty or of youth, was also there; but not a prisoner; she was there to kneel at the bishop's feet, to pray for his blessing. That morning, for the first time for long, long years, had that woman knelt within a Christian church—had received the adorable sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord, after years of penance heroically, lovingly performed at the entrance to the building. That morning she had been absolved, that morning communicated. Ere he went to his home in heaven, the venerable bishop, who had sustained the fainting and often faltering soul through so many years of expiation, had thought fit to pronounce her purified, to command that she should again take her place among the faithful. She came to thank him; to accompany him—him and Magas! Consoled, the procession moved along. Chione—such was the name of the penitent—knelt as the victims knelt. The bishop, ere he surrendered himself, gave his blessing to all the assembly. Magas preceded him to the block. When the axe fell, the woman fell also. Magas and Chione stood together before the judgment-seat of God.

Translated From Le Correspondant.

Abyssinia And King Theodore.

By Antoine D'Abbadie.

A Spanish bull having accidentally strayed on a railroad, which spoiled the beauty of his beloved country, met a locomotive. The king of the pasture-lands, fired with anger at the violation of his right, and listening only to the voice of his courage, lowered his head and butted with his horns so accustomed to victory against the mail-clad invader of his verdant fields. This battle is an image of that which is going to take place between England and Theodore, King of the Kings of Ethiopia. It is plain that it is not Theodore who represents the locomotive.

Before explaining the true motives of the costly English expedition to Abyssinia, it may be well to look at the physical and moral condition of the country which is to be the scene of conflict, and where I passed more than ten years of my youth.

The whole extent of territory from Suez and Aquabah to the Strait of Mandeb, or affliction, along the shores of the Red Sea, is barren and desolate. The small, scattered towns in this region owe their existence to commercial travelling; and even in the most favored portions of the land it takes a two or three days' journey from the salt water into the interior, before meeting cultivated fields.

The only deep bay in the south of the Red Sea is that of Adulis, which the natives designate by the "Gulf of Velvet," perhaps on account of the smoothness of its waters, sheltered by the palisades which guard it on the eastern side. The English, who are fond of baptizing territories before conquering them, have called this part of the sea, "The bay of Annesley." This name is said to be that of the family of Lord Valentia, who, little versed in geography, imagined that he had discovered in 1809 those celebrated districts anciently frequented by Egyptian merchants in the time of the Ptolemies. The island of Desa, formed by a row of schistous hills, shelters the entrance to the bay of Adulis, which we call by this name in memory of that flourishing city of Adulis, which stood by its waves up to the sixth century of our era. The natives still show the site of that Grecian city, and inform the traveller that it was swallowed up by an earthquake. Of its past greatness, there remain but a small number of carved capitals in the lava of the environs, and some sculptured marbles which seem to display the Byzantine style. Near these ruins is the large village of Zullah, which contained, in 1840, two hundred and fourteen cabins, and a population of about one thousand souls. It is from Zullah that the shortest route lies to the plains and highlands of Ethiopia, or, as the English call it, Abyssinia.

Except during January and February, when the weather is still warm, Zullah suffers from the frightful heat which pervades the whole of that stretch of low land called Samhar, which lies along the sea. Wishing to take a bath during the summer, I could not, by reason of the seeming excessive coldness of the water. But placing a thermometer in it, I found the temperature 36 degrees, while in the shade the air was at 48 degrees. I found it at 65 degrees in the between-decks of a French steamer; and when evening brings a refreshing breeze to cool this burning atmosphere, one is tempted to say with a Frenchman after having escaped during the bloody "reign of terror:" "I have done a great deal, for I have managed to live."

Travellers at this season start at midnight, and traverse, on their way into Ethiopia, a plain as barren as desolation itself. Sometimes they encounter the Karif, an atmospheric column of a red brick color, which appears on the horizon like a living phantom. This column seems to increase in volume as it approaches, the air that drives it along roaring like a whirlwind. Man and beast are obliged to turn their backs to it, and it covers them with a dry, black cloud, as with a mantle of horror. In a few minutes the Karif passes away; and men are glad to be out of its hideous gloom, even though it be but to wander again through that intense but quiet heat which broods over the Samhar. Sometimes, also, the Harur, which the Arabs call the Simoom or paison, surprises the traveller. This wind comes without any previous sign of warning, belching out burning death like a furnace. The patient camel then puts his head on the ground, rejoiced to find relief even in the relative freshness of the scorching earth; the strongest of the natives succumb; and such is the sudden and complete prostration of human strength during the simoom, that in the open country I have been unable to hold up a small thermometer, to learn at least the temperature of this strange wind, which science has as yet failed to explain. This Harur lasted five minutes. They say that men and beasts die if it lasts a quarter of an hour.

After crossing those desert plains, the traveller finds the country gradually assume an undulating character. A stream is met. Mountains rise up before him, and deep, verdant valleys extend among them.

I often visited those valleys with, the vain hope of seeing a phenomenon very rare in Europe. During the summer season caravans repose or march in perfect safety under a serene sky, when suddenly the practised ear of a native hears a strange noise in the distance, rapidly increasing in loudness. He cries out, "The torrent!" and climbs breathlessly up the nearest height. In less than half a minute after, the whole valley disappears under a broad and deep stream, which carries with it trees, pieces of rock, and even wild beasts. Rising in an instant, those torrents vanish in a day, and leave no trace of their passage, save ruins of all sorts, and pools of stagnant water in the indentations of the soil. The general nakedness of the mountains explains these strange phenomena. From the bottom of the funnel in which the traveller stands when he is in one of those valleys, he cannot see the small clouds which let fall their liquid burdens with an abundance unknown out of the tropical climates. There is very little loam, and still less of roots of trees to absorb this sudden rain; so that it rolls from rock to rock, as on a roof, rushes through every little valley, and mingles in one common river, as frightful as it is transitory. One day, as I arrived just too late to behold it in all its grandeur, I found a solitary individual, who, with a stupefied look, regarded the still humid earth. "God save you," said I, "what news have you? Where are your arms? Can a man like you remain without lance or buckler?" "May you live long and well!" he replied. "The torrent has carried away my lance, my buckler, my ass, my camel, and my whole substance, my wife and my children. Woe is me! Woe is me!" I then turned to my guide and asked him: "Does thy brother speak truly?" "Doubtless," answered he, "and if the torrent came at this moment, unless we were warned of its approach by the small noise of which I have spoken, it is not the most swift-footed, but the most lucky, who would be saved." Then turning toward the son of his tribe—"May God console thee, my brother!" We all repeated this pious wish, and continued our route, without being able to give anything to this wretched man, for we had neither victuals nor money; and from the summit of the neighboring hills we could hear him repeating for a long time, "Woe is me! Woe is me!"

For more than two centuries the civilization and native wealth of Ethiopia have been concentrated around Lake Tana. Just on its shores stands Quarata, the largest city of oriental Africa—proud of its sanctuary and its twelve thousand inhabitants. A little further on is Aringo, the Versailles of the dusky kings. Near it is Dabra Tabor, the capital, or rather the camp of the last chiefs, as well as of the actual sovereign; and finally, on a spur of mountain which projects to the south, appears Gondar—the famous Gondar, which I have seen, still powerful, although reduced to eight thousand inhabitants, only a fourth of its former population. Of all the faults of King Theodore, that which the Ethiopians will be least ready to forgive is his having systematically burned the city of Gondar. Of seventeen churches, only two have escaped this cool and useless cruelty of the despot.

The Ethiopians are a people of very mixed origin. Languages, institutions, usages, and prejudices, even the shades of color and the formations of the human body, are placed in strange juxtaposition with one another. Except the Somal, who afford instances of tall stature, the Ethiopians are of medium height, have thick lips, white and well-formed teeth, and are of slender frame. Their hair is curly; but straight hair, though rare, is sometimes seen. The Semites have often the aquiline nose of the Europeans. As to the color of the skin, all degrees, from the copper color of the Neapolitan to the jet black of the negro, are found. This latter color is often allied to European features. There is an unconscious and natural grace in all the movements and actions of the Ethiopians. Our sculptors might study their gestures and drapery with profit.

On the coast, to the north of Zullah, live the Tigre, whose language, traditions, and customs entitle them to be considered among the descendants of Sem, like the Hebrews and Arabs. The same must be said of the Tigray, who inhabit the neighboring plateau, and speak a kindred idiom to that of the Tigre. The Amaras, more lively, more intelligent, and more civilized, live in the interior, and use a language of Semitic origin, yet modified by associations with the sons of Cham. This is the language used by most European travellers, for it is commonly employed by the merchant, by the learned, and in diplomacy. The Giiz, or Ethiopian, closely connected with the Tigre, is the dead language, the Latin of those distant countries. It is used in quotations, in philosophical and religious discussions, and sometimes to conceal the sense of a conversation from the vulgar. From Tujurrah to the environs of Zullah, a common language, entirely different from those which we have mentioned, unites all the fractions of the Afar nation, often called Dankalis, but improperly, for the Dankalas, the Adali, etc., are only tribes of the Afar. The Sahos, who are the most numerous among the inhabitants of Zullah, and extend along all the slopes of the neighboring plain, consider themselves as strangers to the Afar, and speak a distinct but affiliated dialect. Another idiom much more important by the number of the nations who use it, has also the same origin as the Afar tongue. We mean the Ylmorma used by the Oromos, whose name in war is Gallei or Galla, and who, by reason of their conquests, have extended their sway from the Afar country as far as to the still unknown regions of interior Africa. Called Gallas by all the Christians of Ethiopia, the Oromos threaten, by their proximity, the stronghold of Magdala, where the English prisoners have been awaiting for four years the arrival of their avenging countrymen.

A serious calculation of the population of any African nation has never been made. As to the centres of population, a fatigued and disgusted traveller, looking at them from a distance and but for a moment, might state the census of such or such a city to be ten thousand souls. An optimist, on the contrary, might gravely affirm that at least thirty thousand should be admitted as the correct number. It is, in fact, almost impossible to form a proper estimate of the population of Ethiopia. Considering its extent of territory, I should say there are three or four millions in it, though if some other traveller were to maintain that it contains six or eight millions I could not refute his opinion, owing to the fact that I do not know the proportion between the inhabited and the desert portions of the country.

II.

The Jews were formerly numerous in Abyssinia. There are not eighty thousand of them left now, and they are gradually disappearing under the influence of the powerful civilization of the Amara.

The origin of the Ethiopian Jews probably dates from the time of the prophet Jeremias, when commerce was carried on between Alexandria and Aksum. At a later period, similar facilities brought to Ethiopia the first Christian missionaries. This happened in the beginning of the fourth century, when the inhabitants of Gaul, or France, were still plunged in the darkness of paganism. The truth, however, progressed slowly in Abyssinia; for the local Judaism, though notably separated from that of the Hebrews, preserved its political power during five or six hundred years, notwithstanding the wonderful efforts of native missionaries, whose feasts and martyrdoms are still celebrated in the country. Even up to the 14th century there were pagans in it; and there are, very probably, some there still.

After the Mussulman invasion of the fifteenth century, Islamism filtered through Egyptian society. The Christianity of the country became corrupt, and we can liken it to nothing better now than to those lepers who abound in this part of Africa, whose bodies are at first attacked in their extremities, and fall away piecemeal. In the same way, her Christianity perished on the frontiers of Ethiopia. Twenty years before our arrival among the Tigre, they were Christians, or rather they lived in the recollection of their faith; but without baptism or sacrifice, and guided in their prayers by the descendants of their last priests. They became Mussulmans under our eyes, with the exception of their principal chief, who said, with a touching and proud respect for ancient usages, that "a king ought to die in the faith of his fathers." One becomes irritated on reflecting that two or three fervent missionaries could have, at the beginning of this century, rolled back the tide of advancing Mohammedanism, by evangelizing or rather reviving that ancient Christianity whose history goes back as far as St. Athanasius, and which we have seen expire after ages of agony.

If we study Christianity in the centre of Ethiopia, we find a somewhat confused schism, but of all schisms the one least removed from Catholic orthodoxy. The only dogmatic points which we regret in this schism are the one procession of the Holy Ghost, which has been condemned among us only at a late period, and the belief in only one nature in Jesus Christ, which is publicly professed by the African schools. But the term in the Abyssinian vernacular which we translate by nature, has such a vague and obscure signification that, if the word could be destroyed, the schism would no longer exist. It must be remembered that the Ethiopians do not understand the art of defining; and when I restricted this ambiguous term according to our method, they understood the dogma exactly as we, and congratulated themselves on being, without knowing it, attached to the same faith as Rome, that seat of St. Peter which always commands their respect.

What particularly distinguish their Christianity from ours, are vicious or irregular practices. Like many of the Eastern Christians, they allow the marriage of the clergy; but in the abbeys, where there are professors, they allow no priest to say Mass who is not a celibatarian by vow. "Among you," said an Ethiopian who had visited Europe, "the important practice is to go to church." "And among you," I answered, "the one thing necessary is to prolong your fastings." One is tempted to say that the active people of the West, and the slow and repose-loving nations of the East, have made the principal merit of a Christian to consist in those pious exercises which cost the least trouble.

It is impossible to leave this subject without saying a word about the Dabtara, or secular clerics. They were organized by a king who found himself, like many of his royal brethren in Europe, very much embarrassed by those mixed questions, in which the spiritual power seems to invade the domain of the temporal. To keep the balance, between them, he created an intermediary body, called the Dabtara. This order is filled from all classes of society; and it possesses the usufruct of all the churches. It alone takes charge of the temporal affairs of the church, and frequently its members act as parish priests, which is a purely temporal office in Abyssinia. The Dabtara hire by the month, rebuke or dismiss the priest who says Mass. Their essential function consists in singing in choir. This duty requires a certain education. In Europe the music of our church hymns may be changed, the words remaining unaltered. The contrary is the case among the Ethiopians. Their music is traditional and sacramental, and in every well-ordered church, the rhymed words of every hymn are specially composed for every festival. The twelve Dabtara of every church display their piety, wisdom, and especially their wit in these productions. They use hymns learnedly ambiguous, to criticise the bishop, to give a lesson to the head of the monks, and even political hints to the sovereign. By recalling an act of some personage of the Old Testament, they find occasion to criticise the government of the city, to praise some Maecenas who is expected to be present at the service, or even, if necessary, to satisfy a personal grudge. When a Dabtara advances into the choir to whisper into the ear of the principal chanter the hymn which has just been written by the Dabtara, and which the singer must know by heart, the other Dabtaras surround the composer, examine the sense of the rhyme, and no matter what may be the result of their investigation, they always congratulate the happy author. Sometimes it is discovered that the hymn has not been made by a member of the order, but by some young candidate in distress, who, for a measure of meal, often sells to the wealthy the fresh inspirations of his genius.

After the teacher of plain-chant, the most important professor is he who teaches grammar, the roots of the sacred language, its dictionary, and particularly the art of composing hymns. After the lesson, the pupils spread over the lawn before the church, repeat the precepts just heard from their professor, and essay to make rhymes or compose hymns, which they afterward recite to him in order to obtain the benefit of his criticism. As in our middle ages, these scholars ask alms and live in misery; often they are the only servants of their preceptors. Lively and frolicsome, like our collegians, they play many tricks on their fellow-students, but never on their teacher, whom they love and almost worship. Having once chanced at Gondar to describe how my college-fellows in France had eaten the dinner of their professor, and left a sermon on fasting and patience on his plate, I was met with such a torrent of invective, that I never ventured on a repetition of the scandal.

In Abyssinia, education is essentially public and gratuitous. As all explanations must be made in the vernacular, which I spoke but poorly in the beginning, I was obliged to have recourse to a private tutor, and when I wished to recompense him for his trouble, I was answered that science should not be sold like any other vile merchandise, and that the honor of the teaching body required knowledge to be transmitted gratuitously, just as it had been acquired. The Ethiopian students are generally very diligent. If they play truant, their parents bring them into the church where the school is being held, and tie their feet together with an iron chain. Sometimes this disciplinary measure is ordered by the professor, and pupils are often seen who, distrusting themselves, ask for those chains, which are not considered symbols of dishonor. They are rarely worn by the higher scholars.

The university course of the Ethiopians is composed of four branches, which might be compared to the four faculties of our own. A fifth branch, devoted to astronomy and replete with traditional ideas, has not been cultivated for some time past. I knew the last professor of this science, who had only one pupil. The other classes are occupied with the study of the New Testament, the fathers of the church, civil and canon law, and the Old Testament. This last requires an effort of memory of which few Europeans are capable; for I have never heard but of one man in the West who knew the whole Bible by heart. No one can be a teacher in Ethiopia without knowing by heart the text of the book he is to explain, the variations of four or five manuscripts, and especially the ingenious commentary, sometimes even learned, but always traditional and purely oral, on the text. The degree of bachelor is unknown in that country; that of doctor is given to the student who is chosen by his professor as capable of explaining in the evening to his comrades the lessons given in class in the morning. In the case of a doubt of his capacity, the teacher is consulted, and his affirmation is considered a sufficient diploma. Great attention and much perseverance are required to make this system of unmethodical education profitable. An aged professor informed me that he had learned to read in three years. He spent two years afterward in learning the liturgical chant, and five years in studying grammar and in composing hymns. He learned how to comment on the New Testament in seven years; and spent fifteen years on the Old Testament, for the strain on his memory was very great.

I have dwelt somewhat on the Ethiopian colleges because M. Blanc, one of the English prisoners of Magdala, says expressly in his narration: "The Abyssinians have no literature; their Christianity is only a name; their conversational power is very limited." To this testimony, altogether negative, I oppose the statement first made, and which I could prove and extend farther. I will merely add that in Gojjam, as well as at Gondar and elsewhere, I have held disputes with native. Christians, on religious, philosophical, and other scientific subjects, and found them as well informed as if they had been brought up in Paris or at London.

With rare exceptions, the regular clergy alone has preserved its virtues and its prestige. The secular priests have lost a great part of their importance by the singular institution of the Dabtara. Yet the Ethiopians, jealous of their political independence, and capable of preserving it by the natural influence of their traditional customs, wish to keep religious authority powerful and undivided. To avoid schisms, and as several bishops can consecrate others, they recognize only one, who must be of white race and a stranger to the country. He has always been consecrated by the schismatical patriarch of Alexandria; but, since the last consecration, I was assured that the Abyssinians would make application elsewhere for the future. The title of their bishop is abun. The last abun or aboona was Salama, who having only a semi-canonical appointment, and besides being addicted to all kinds of vice, had very little influence over the inferior clergy or the people. Suspected by the professors and hated by the Dabtara, he planted more thorns than blessings in the hearts of his subjects. A Copt by birth, he at first frequented the English Protestant school at Cairo, and carried afterward to the convent where he made his vows such doctrines of disobedience and incredulous opinions, that the Patriarch of Alexandria thought it would be wise to exile him to Ethiopia as abun, though he was under the canonical age. In fact, the abun was more anxious for money than for the faith. He received the 36,000 francs, which are usually given as a present at the investiture of the Abyssinian bishop; and the patriarch thus delivered up distant Ethiopia, too much despised by the Copts, to the vices and vague doctrines of Salama. This ornament of the episcopacy had no sooner arrived in his diocese, than he devoted himself to commerce, especially to the traffic in slaves, which is most profitable. His vices were such that our pen cannot describe them. He told me himself that by mistake he had ordained priest a boy only ten years old, and laughed heartily at the trick played on him in his case. Having learned from Monseigneur de Jacobis the cases which annul an ordination, I told them to the professors of canon law. They kept silence in public; and when I pushed them with questions, they all gave me this answer: "Your objections are true; only, in the name of God, do not scatter them among the Dabtara. Except the Masses said by old priests ordained by the preceding abun, there are none valid, and there is no holy sacrifice in Ethiopia; but the ignorance and strong faith of the faithful will suffice before God for their salvation." Abun Salama, busied with intrigues, in which he thought himself very skilful, was nevertheless, only the tool of the princes, who attached him to them in order to help their political combinations. It was he who consecrated King Theodore, who, after frequently insulting his consecrator, finally cast him into prison, where he lately died.

III.

No matter what the English prisoners may say to the contrary, the Ethiopian soldiers are very brave, and fight fiercely if they are well commanded. As in Europe during the middle ages, the flower of their army is composed of cavalry. The battle is begun by the fusiliers, who shoot well; but their importance had not yet been comprehended by the native chiefs in my time. Soon the charge is sounded, the cavalry rushes to the conflict, the victory is quickly won, and the infantry, badly furnished with blunt sabres, lances, and bucklers, hardly does anything but make prisoners. Every soldier keeps all the spoils of those he may vanquish, except the guns and blood-horses, which by right belong to the general. During this latter phase of the victory, the commander-in-chief, deserted by his eager soldiers, is left almost unattended. In speaking with Ethiopian officers, I often mentioned to them, but always in vain, how important it is to have a body-guard for the commander. The first victory of Kasa, now King Theodore, attracted attention to this necessity afterward. Let us say a word here about the mother of this chief, since she is involuntarily one of the remote causes of the English expedition. This good old woman once did me a great service, and in 1848, notwithstanding the recent elevation of her son to royalty, she was still so polite as to rise at my approach. She was then courted as a power behind the throne. But a short time previously, she was the despised mother of Kasa, an obscure rebel, living in misery, and reprobated by all. His poor mother, in her old age, joined a religious order, and put on the little white bonnet which is its distinctive sign. But she was penniless. The convents had been robbed, and every one shunned the mother of a rebel. She was finally compelled to turn vendor of koso, a drug which the Ethiopians take six times a year, to kill the tape-worm, with which most of the inhabitants are afflicted.

Kasa, the rebel of Quara, grew more powerful day by day, and the proud Manan grew angry. Manan was the mother of Ali, the most powerful prince of Central Ethiopia, and the real mayoress of the palace of that fainékant king who ruled at Gondar, only within the precincts of his dwelling. Manan, desiring to be called ytege, or queen, an exclusive title in that country, caused the nominal king to be dethroned by her son, and placed her husband, Yohannis, or John, in his stead. This prince was an estimable man, and honored me with his friendship.

In 1847, war was waged against the rebel Kasa. The soldiers of Manan insulted their adversary. One gasconading cavalier exclaimed, at a review: "Manan, my great queen, depend on my valor, for I shall lead before you in chains this fellow; this son of a vendor of koso!" But Kasa won the battle, and chained the boaster in a hut, where, after a fast of twenty-four hours, he received the following message from Kasa, delivered verbally by a waggish page: "How hast thou passed the night, my brother? How hast thou passed the day? May God deliver thee from thy chains! May the Lord grant thee a little patience! Be sad with me, for yesterday mamma remained at market all day, and could not sell a single dose of koso. I have therefore no money to buy bread for thee or for me. May God grant thee patience, my brother! May God break thy chains! It is Kasa who sends thee this message." The next day the officer received the same message. On the third day the irony of the conqueror was slightly changed. After the usual salutations, the page joyfully informed the captive that "Mamma had succeeded in selling a dose of koso, and bought a loaf, which Kasa sends him."

A few days after, I heard these details at Gondar. The news-mongers praised the mockery; but they only half-smiled, for the flower of society had fallen into misfortune. Then they regretted the good king Yohannis, and suspected the still undeveloped wickedness of the character of Kasa, the adventurous rebel of Quara. I saw Kasa, or Theodore, frequently at Gondar in 1848. He was dressed as a simple soldier, and had nothing, either in his features or language, which presaged his high destiny. He loved to speak of fire-arms. He was about twenty-eight years old; his face rather black than red; his figure slim; and his agility seemed to arise less from his muscular power than from that of his will. His forehead is high and almost convex; his nose slightly aquiline, a frequent characteristic of the pure-blooded Amaras. His beard, like theirs, is sparse, and his thin lips betray rather an Arabian than an Ethiopian origin. Kasa conquered all his competitors, became King of Ethiopia, and was consecrated by the abun, taking the name of Theodore, to verify an old prophecy current among the Jews and Christians, that a king of this name should rule over the ancient empire of Aksum. But the Ethiopians, like all people of mountainous regions, tenacious of their independence, and accustomed to liberty, did not yield at once to an upstart usurper, who owed his success less to ability and valor than to good luck.

In the beginning of his reign he acted with much clemency, owing, it is said, to the happy influence exercised over him by his first wife. When she died, he caused her body to be embalmed, according to the custom of the Ethiopian princes of the race of Solomon. Her coffin was carried after Theodore everywhere he marched. A special tent was erected in the camp for her remains, and the conqueror of Ethiopia was often seen entering it to meditate on his past happiness, and ask of God, as it was said, prudence and wisdom for the future. It is at this time that he had real thoughts, though always eccentric, of a good government. Civil divorce, and the consequent confusion of marriage, are the plague-spot of Abyssinian society. They uproot the foundations of the family, and are opposed to all ideas of order and stability. Without understanding that a radical change in society cannot be effected by a mere proclamation, Theodore decreed the obligation of regular marriages, and the abolition of divorce. An able statesman would have sought to destroy gradually, abuses of such long standing. Another of his decrees did him equal honor, and might have succeeded better, for he revived the old law of the Ethiopians against the slave-trade.

But the heart of man is fickle. Prince Wibe, falling into the hands of the conqueror, recommended his daughter to the Dabtara and monks of Darasge, his favorite abbey, where he had his family burial vault. One day the faithful guardians of the spot saw a band of soldiers rushing toward them. They thought it was Tissu, a recent rebel. They immediately concealed the sacred vessels, and for safety shut up the daughter of Wibe in the vault. Their surprise was great when they found it was Theodore himself, who was, according to custom, marching over his kingdom in quest of insurgents. He wanted to see everything; and when they refused to open the cavern for him, maintaining that a tomb prepared for Wibe, who was still a chained captive, could have no interest for his conqueror, Theodore suspected some plot, and caused the stone of the sepulchre to be removed. His surprise was great when, instead of a coffin, he beheld a beautiful girl, bathed in tears, and in the attitude of prayer. Theodore forgot his first love. He set Wibe at liberty, and married his daughter. This union was not happy. The ytege, or queen, having interceded to save the life of a rebel whom she had known at the court of her father, Theodore refused at first her request, and becoming angry, finally struck her. In order to humiliate her the more, he made a common camp follower his concubine. From this moment his decree on Christian marriage became a dead letter, and the slave-trade was renewed. Men must have stronger virtue than that of King Theodore, that their good thoughts may bear full fruit.

IV.

Let us here give some account of the English missions in Ethiopia; for they have helped to bring about and inflame the war now pending. M. Gobat, a Swiss Protestant, went as far as Gondar about forty years ago, and acquired a knowledge of the language of the country. After his return to Europe, he published a book of such seeming good faith, that it deceived me at first, as it must have deceived the English projectors of the missions. Charity obliges me to write that M. Gobat, in giving an account of his sermons to the people, has rather described what he desired to say and the answers he would like to hear, than what he actually said or heard. Without citing other witnesses of this fact, that of an educated Dabtara will suffice, who was ignorant of the existence of the Protestant missions. "Samuel Gobat," said he, "was a prepossessing person, who deceived one at first. I, who followed him, can affirm that he was really an unbeliever, or that he pretended to be so. He proposed frightful doubts and objections in matters affecting the Christian religion, but under the form of hypotheses. He always began his strange assertions by an if. Could he express them boldly? If he had, you know that in Gondar, at least, he would not have been allowed to continue, and he would have been denied a residence in our city."

The missionary societies in England did not know this condition of the Ethiopian mind, and influenced by the specious arguments of M. Gobat, they sent him a re-enforcement of three ministers, whom he left to return to Europe. They preached much more honestly and openly than he in Adwa and Tigray, where they were established. They were expelled in 1838, fifteen days before my arrival in the country. Two of them then went to Suria, from which they were also driven. With a perseverance worthy of a better cause, they returned again to Tigray, and again to Suria. Always exiled, they had at last the prudence, in 1855, to make no further attempt at evangelizing the country.

Seventeen years before this last date I met at Cairo a young Lazarist priest, whom I persuaded to accompany me into Ethiopia, to found a Catholic mission. He preceded me, went to Adwa about eight days before the first expulsion of the Protestant missionaries; and as my project seemed to him sensible, requiring only time and patience to realize it, I brought letters from him to Europe in 1838. His holiness, Gregory XVI., favored our attempt, and sent two missionaries to Ethiopia under the charge of Monseigneur de Jacobis, who soon became known all through that region by the name of Abuna Ya'igob. In spite of some imprudence, inevitable, perhaps, in a country where there are such strange contrasts, he succeeded beyond my most sanguine hopes, and when I left the country in 1849, there were twelve thousand Catholics in it, and many of the priests were natives. Last year an English account gives the number as sixty thousand; for the influence of true doctrines could not fail to be extended among a people so intelligent as are the Abyssinians. Monseigneur de Jacobis helped much to obtain this result, by his unchangeable mildness, and by that personal influence which is always exercised by a priest devoted to incessant prayer.

The fate of the Protestant missions was different. The ministers, instead of attributing their want of success to themselves, have blamed the Catholics as the movers of their expulsion from Ethiopia. Even the English Consul Plowden in his official report says that Theodore, after perusing the history of the Jesuits in Abyssinia, decided to allow no Catholic priest to teach in his states. The English are fond of decrying the memory of the Jesuits who taught in Ethiopia up to 1630. It is, however, very singular that I never heard of this history, and that the most learned anti-Catholic professors at Gondar never mentioned it to me in our controversies. On the contrary, they spoke of Peter Paez and his co-laborers with admiration mingled with regret, and quoted touching legends concerning them. A little further on in his account, Plowden, who seems ignorant of the fact that sermons are unknown in Ethiopia, adds that Theodore prohibited all preaching contrary to the Copt Church. We cannot expect that an English soldier, more or less Protestant, should comprehend fully religious questions; but although he was a mere soldier, he ought to have known that Theodore was attached to one of the three national sects, and had forbidden all other creeds, and condemned Catholics as well as Protestants.

It was in consequence of this decree that Monseigneur de Jacobis was compelled to leave Gondar in 1855. This pious bishop went to Musawwa, and there continued to govern his mission, which has been left almost undisturbed by the natives for almost thirty years. The chief proselytes of Gondar retired also to the shores of the Red Sea, and the Protestant ministers, always on the watch, imagined they had at length found a good opportunity to teach in the capital. They went thither under the guidance of M. Krapf, who, in default of other qualities, has at least uncommon activity and persistence, but which have been so far sterile of results. At their first expulsion in 1838, the four Protestant missionaries left but one proselyte in the whole of Ethiopia. This was a quondam pilgrim. He was going to Jerusalem with an Ethiopian priest, who, falling short of money, sold his companion into bondage. M. Gobat having ransomed him, had no difficulty in inspiring him with hatred of the priests, and of all their doctrines. We can only regard this single convert as an apostate induced to desert his faith by resentment and a spirit of revenge. Another young and intelligent Ethiopian, after studying for years in the Protestant schools of Europe, when asked, answered me frankly that the numerous dissensions in religion witnessed by him among Protestants, had destroyed all religious belief in his mind. Religious England always believing, though erroneously, ought to be startled by the consideration that her missionaries, real mercenaries as they are, only succeed in propagating doubt and incredulity instead of spreading the gospel.

M. Gobat, who was somewhat of a diplomatist, in writing to King Theodore, did not state his object to be the foundation of a Protestant mission. He merely announced that skilful mechanics, desiring to improve the physical condition of the country, wished to settle in it. King Theodore, who was desirous of obtaining blacksmiths, gunners, and engineers, to make cannon and mortars, and build bridges and roads, gave his consent. M. Gobat hinted that the workmen wanted the free exercise of their religion. Theodore referred the matter to the abun, who, knowing the tricks of his old teachers, bluntly told Mr. Sterne, one of the missionaries, who spoke of his intention to convert the Talasa, or native Jews, as the sole object of his coming to Gondar, "This mission to the Jews is only a pretext to plot against the faith of the Christians." Pretending not to take the hint, Mr. Sterne repeated his assertion, and the king consented to receive the English mechanics, who were to be the instruments in the hands of the pious missionaries in "evangelizing" the barbarous Ethiopians. But on the testimony of Mr. Sterne himself, and that of other Protestants, the scheme was a complete failure. Many of the "mechanics," or "pious laymen," became as immoral as any of the natives. Besides, in violation of their solemn promise made to the abun, the missionaries distributed, as Plowden informs us, "hundreds of Bibles, and taught the great truths of salvation to many pagans and Christians." We extract these facts from the work of the Rev. Mr. Badger, considered a most trustworthy witness in official circles in England. [Footnote 54] After a short stay at Gondar, Mr. Sterne went to London, was made bishop, and published a wordy volume containing but one fact worth noticing, namely, the intrinsic proof that the author was ignorant of the most ordinary customs of Ethiopia. By an imprudence which has cost him dear, Mr. Sterne related the story of the vender of koso in his book. A former student of the English missionaries informed Theodore of the fact, and the Protestants had reason to feel bitterly that a man's friends often prove to be his greatest enemies.

[Footnote 54: The Story of the British Captives in Abyssinia, 1863, 1864. By the Rev. George Percy Badger.]

V.

The English government was indignant that its agent Plowden, as it is known, should have been massacred on the highway near Gondar. Theodore avenged his death, however, by the barbarous slaughter of its authors and their associates. But the party of the "saints" in England was not satisfied with this reparation. Theodore was weak, and no match for England. It was safe, therefore, to insult him. Had he been as powerful as the United States, England would have been as loath to touch him as she is afraid to refuse satisfaction to America for the ravages of the Alabama on the high seas. She, however, suppressed the consulship of Gondar, and sent Captain Cameron as her consul to Massowah, under the protection of the Turkish flag. Captain Cameron was a brave officer who had served in the Crimea, but he was no diplomatist. We all know that, as much from lack of this quality as from the semi-barbarous habits of King Theodore, who thinks himself all-powerful because he has been so successful in conquering rebels in his own kingdom, Cameron and five other English subjects, among them M. Rassam—another unskilful English agent—and two Germans, were imprisoned at Magdala on the 8th of July, 1866.

Magdala, where the prisoners still remain, is a stronghold in the Abyssinian highlands, 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the climate there is less warm than in most parts of the torrid zone. There are a church, a treasury, a prison, and huts in the place, and a population of about three or four thousand persons, of whom four hundred are prisoners of every description; a garrison of six hundred sharpshooters and as many common soldiers armed with lance and shield. Although this fortress is considered strong by the natives, one of the prisoners writes that a single shell would suffice to blow up a place which the Ethiopians have looked upon as impregnable for three centuries.

Besides the European prisoners at Magdala, Theodore keeps fourteen others, mostly German mechanics, near his own quarters. These artisans, exported at the expense of a Protestant missionary society as "pious laymen" began their evangelical labors as messengers of peace in a very extraordinary fashion, by fabricating mortars and other engines of war. As for the spiritual welfare of the Christians of Ethiopia, they looked well to it by distilling bad brandy; and as for the temporal, they drove the profitable trade of slave-mongers. This is what M. Rassam, an Arabian, who turned Protestant to get employment from the English government, tells us. He was nine years at Aden as lieutenant-governor, and is considered one of the ablest English agents in the East, if we are to believe the parliamentary eulogium passed on him in a recent debate in the House of Commons. The last account heard from this unfortunate ambassador does not warrant the belief in his ability. The abun, Salama, having died, M. Rassam advises the English to choose another abun in Egypt, and put him at the head of the invading army as a kind of palladium! This advice, if put into execution, would be as absurd as if, on the death of Pius IX., Premier Disraeli, imitating the policy of Pitt, and wishing to restore the Marches to the Holy See, should send an army against the Sardinians, with a pope at its head elected at Canterbury or elsewhere, Jansenist or Catholic, no matter which, and should expect all the Italians to respect him as sovereign pontiff.

VI.

England has undertaken the Abyssinian expedition to preserve her prestige in the East, and she is determined to gain her point. The dusky King Theodore, pretended descendant of Solomon, cannot complain that he has not received diplomatic notice. When the German who brought him the British ultimatum, told him that if he did not deliver up the prisoners he would have both the armies of England and France against him—"Let them come," said Theodore, "and call me a woman if I do not give them battle." We know not if there be more of folly or of intrepid valor in this proud answer. In fact, notwithstanding the narrations of some travellers, naturally suspected of exaggeration, the Ethiopians have no idea of the military power of the Western nations, and their king may believe that he is a match for them.

The Bay of Adulis, usually so silent, is now swarming with ships. There were in it, a short time ago, seventy vessels, without counting those of the Arabians and East-Indians. The English have built two quays to assist the debarkation of troops. The English have the Snider gun, which they pretend to be superior to the Chassepot rifle. They have even forty elephants to frighten Theodore. One of them, an elephant of good sense if ever there was one, behaved himself so badly at the debarkation of the troops, that he was sent back to Hindostan.

England is determined to succeed. Instead of borrowing, she has levied a tax of ten millions of dollars. She will need at least six times that amount before the end of the war. Every English prisoner to be freed will cost at least ten millions. But her object is not merely the freeing of the prisoners, though she asserts that it is. She has to provide water for sixty-five thousand men and many beasts on the plains of Zullah, where, in default of natural fresh water, the troops drink a distillation of sea water. They need every day one hundred and eighty thousand quarts to drink; and this quantity has been provided at the enormous cost of twenty thousand dollars for every twenty-four hours. To transport the munitions of war, mules were bought and brought to Zullah from Egypt, Turkey, Spain, and France. The English soldiers, not knowing at first how to manage them, tied them with hay ropes. Many of the mules ate the ropes, escaped into the desert, and were lost. A railroad has been built, running from the sea to Sanafe, the first border station of Ethiopia, a distance of almost one hundred miles.

The line of march has been well chosen. The English could have crossed the plains of Tigray, which are level and oppose no obstacle; and then crossed through Wasaya without meeting any noteworthy difficulty except the river Takkaze, and Mount Lamalmo. Farther on, at Dabra Tabor, where Theodore usually resides, they might have chosen either the plains of the Lanige, or the cool and verdant hills of the Waynadaga territory as the sites of their encampment. But this route is not the shortest. Besides, the Wasaya begins to be unhealthy in the month of May, and there is no forage as far as Wagara.

The shorter route, which the English have taken, is by Agame and Wag. On those elevated plateaux they may keep all their energy, and they will find a territory less ravaged by civil war, and good pastures. The distance from Zullah to Magdala is about the same as from Paris to Lyons. But artillery is with difficulty transported over many of the gullies on the route; and perhaps for the elephants it will be found impracticable. But the leader of the expedition, Sir Robert Napier, will not balk at these details. He will push rapidly on to Delanta before the rainy season, which begins about the 10th of July. According to the prisoners, if he should invest Magdala at the beginning of May, the want of water would soon force the garrison to surrender. If the first rains have fallen before his arrival, the English will occupy Tanta among the Wara Haymano, and from that point open fire on Magdala. Soldiers living in huts, without casemates or caverns, could not stand a day against the English guns. In, any case, Magdala, the great Ethiopian fortress, will be taken, and it will remain to be seen whether the troops will march to Dabra Tabor to burn the camp of King Theodore, and kill him, or make him prisoner. Nevertheless, the use of diplomacy will not be despised. When Theodore put M. Rassam in prison, with great protestations of friendship, he promised him his liberty on the arrival of certain machines and expert workers. England sent both to Massowah, but required first the liberation of the prisoners without having used any of those forms which render a contract binding in the eyes of the Abyssinians. On his side, Theodore did not understand the value of a simple signature. Besides, he had been deceived by Plowden, who denied his character of consul, and cheated by the denials of the Protestant missionaries as to their attempts to proselytize the native Christians. He did not, therefore, believe the protestations of the English. The want of a sensible agent caused the failure of this negotiation, which might have succeeded if more skilfully conducted. Moreover, the English army, on entering the Tigray, issued a proclamation, of which the Times published a literal copy, as ridiculous in Amariñña dialect as in English. Besides, the language used is almost unknown in Agama, where this document has been published. The English officers do not seem to have known that a proclamation is never published in Ethiopia in a written form. But what will King Theodore, the pretended descendant of Solomon, do? It is difficult to answer this question. The natives report that Theodore is often out of his senses when he drinks brandy, which the "pious laymen" of the Protestant mission zealously manufacture for his spiritual comfort. From the very beginning of his reign, Plowden informs us that he manifested symptoms of insanity. The English prisoners tell us more explicitly that Theodore himself informed them that his father was insane, and that he believed himself attacked with the same disorder. Several traits in his conduct toward the prisoners, and the massacre of one hundred of his own soldiers in his camp, on mere suspicion, give gravity to the assertions. If this be true, England has declared war against an adversary unworthy of her dignity. In case of defeat, the only refuge for Theodore is to retreat to his native province of Quara, on the border of a terrible desert, breathing pestilence on all the region around. Woe to the English soldiers if they attempt to follow him thither!

Of all the ancient empire of Yasu the Great, that Ethiopian Louis XIV., Theodore has only Quara, that he can call his own. His governors of the Tigra have been expelled by rebels, or have made themselves independent of his authority. Gojjan has proclaimed its independence; Wag also has risen in arms; Suria is free, and gives asylum to all refugees. Yet these are regions but recently subjected to the conquering arms of Theodore. Tissu Gobaze rules the lower Tigray, Wasaya, Walguayt, Simen, Wazara, and as far as Dambya, where Gondar stood before Theodore destroyed it.

What then is left to this unfortunate tyrant, resisted at home by numberless insurgents, and threatened by foreign force with destruction? The Awamas, whose rights he has respected because they know how to defend themselves, but who will seize the first opportunity to rebel; Tagusa, Acafar, Alafa, and Meca stretching along the Tana, but which he has made solitudes by his systematic pillage; and finally Bagemdir, that beautiful portion of the country, which obeys him with regret. A disease, a slight cheek, or a courageous peasant, would be sufficient to destroy Theodore, that royal meteor, which, after shining for a few years, will soon be extinguished in the night of oblivion. Considering the greatness of the English preparations, we are led to suspect that she has the intention of holding Northern Ethiopia after conquering it. Appearances seems to favor this conjecture, and no matter what the English journals may say, the idea is not of French origin. Plowden urged its realization in his official letters thirteen years ago; Cameron is in favor of it; and General Coghlan timidly hints its practicability in his military monograph on Ethiopian affairs. The English have been masters of Aden for the last thirty years, and they wish to make the Red Sea an English lake. They desire Ethiopia; for from it they could invade Egypt, where "King Cotton" would rule in all his glory. They allege the case of Algiers annexed to France in justification of their project. But let it be observed that Charles X., who ransomed at his own expense, the Greek slaves sold in the markets of Constantinople and in Egypt, could not allow the Dey of Algiers alone to keep French, Spanish, and English Christians in bonds; while the English have never done anything to prevent the slave-trade in Abyssinia. Many Christian slaves are annually bought within gunshot of the British ships on the Red Sea, to be brutalized in Mussulman harems. England has never made an effort to stop the traffic there. Can we blame King Theodore then, who, according to his degree of intelligence and power, wished to put an end to this inhuman commerce, for saying with at least as much modesty as her majesty's government has at command, "Which of us two is the greater barbarian?"

New Publications.

St. Columba, Apostle of Caledonia. By the Count de Montalembert, of the French Academy, New York: Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street. 1868.

Irish ecclesiastical history is something unique in the world, and presents to us the spirit of Christianity run into an entirely new and original mould. The Celtic race, whose most perfect and completely actualized type exists in the people of Ireland, is a singular specimen of humanity, as it used to be in the primitive ages just after, and perhaps long before the flood, preserved, continued, and apparently incapable of being destroyed or changed, in the midst of other races of totally opposite character. The sudden and entire conversion of this people to Christianity, and the invincible tenacity with which it has clung to its first faith, together with the marked individuality of the expression which it has given to the Christian idea, form a phenomenon in history which cannot be too much studied or admired. It was a happy moment for Ireland when that Chevalier Bayard of Catholic literature, the Count de Montalembert, felt his chivalrous soul moved by the story of her ancient princely monks and dauntless, adventurous apostles, and set himself to the task of writing a work which unites all the romantic, poetic charm of the lyric strains of her bards, with the accuracy and minuteness of her monastic chronicles. His narrative, partly owing to the nature of his subject, and partly to his own genius, is like the Scottish Chiefs and the Waverley Novels. The most striking, original, and grand of all the characters depicted by him in that part of the Monks of the West which is devoted to Ireland, is St. Columba or Columbkill. This great man, who was by birth heir to the dignity of Ard-righ, or chief king of Ireland, the founder of Iona, and the apostle of Scotland, is the favorite saint of the Irish people after St. Patrick. He is a more thoroughly Irish saint than the great apostle of Ireland, who was the father and founder of the Irish people as a Christian nation, but was himself, probably, by birth and extraction a Gallo-Roman. A warrior, a poet, a chieftain, a monk, a statesman, an apostle, and, it is supposed, a prophet; the most intensely devoted and patriotic lover of his native island, perhaps, that ever lived; and yet sentenced by his stern old hermit confessor to perpetual banishment from it; the life of Columba overflows with all the materials of the most romantic and heroic interest.

The Life of Columba, whose title is placed at the head of this notice, is, as we have implied already, a monograph extracted from the great work on the Monks of the West, by Montalembert. It is a small book of only 170 duo-decimo pages, and therefore readable by almost everybody who ever reads anything better than newspapers and dime novels. It is, above all others, a book for every one, young or old, who has Celtic-Catholic blood in his veins. It is time now to use that English language which was forced by the haughty conqueror upon the Irish people, from a cruel motive which God has overruled for their glory and his own, as the means of diffusing the treasures hidden hitherto, so to speak, under a cromlech. Those who put this unwilling people into a compulsory course of English, little thought what a keen-edged weapon they were placing in their hands, and training them to use. They could not foresee what use would be made of it by Curran, O'Connell, Thomas Moore, Bishop Doyle, and Father Meehan. The possession of the English language places the Irish people in communication with the whole civilized world, without depriving them of their rich patrimony of traditional lore, legend, and song. It is incumbent on all who love the faith, and sympathize with the wrongs and hardships, of the Irish people, to strain every nerve to increase the number and diffuse the circulation of books, in which this religious and patriotic tradition may be perpetuated. Wherever the Irish people are, in Ireland, England, America, Australia, they are deriving their intellectual nutriment more and more from English books; and thus, in proportion as they become readers, are coming under the influence of writers who write in the English language. It is most important, therefore, for those who are charged with the responsibility of watching over their religious, moral, and intellectual culture, to see to it that their minds are not flooded with an excess of purely secular literature, which has in it no mixture of the Catholic tradition. The greatest danger and misfortune of our rising generation of Catholics in America is the lack of this tradition in historical, poetic, and romantic literature. Even those who are the descendants of parents and progenitors of the old Catholic stock, must necessarily lose by degrees all vivid sentiment of any other nationality than the American, and be more influenced by the genius loci than by any other genius, whether Celtic or Teutonic. The danger to be guarded against is a peril of becoming so much Americanized as to be reduced to a caput mortuum in the process. An American citizen, without faith and religion, even though he may be born and live in Boston, is involved in the consequences of original sin as well as others. It is no gain to transform a poor, simple, believing, fervent Catholic immigrant, in the second or third generation, into an intelligent, well fed, healthy animal, with a comfortable farm and the elective franchise, but with no more soul than the man with the muck-rake in the Pilgrim's Progress, or those dirty heathen in the suburbs of the holy city of New York, who spend their Sundays in weeding cabbages. This deleterious change must be prevented, not only, by purely spiritual means, but also by preserving and fostering as much as possible the natural bonds which connect our youth of Catholic origin with the traditions of their ancestry. Hence, we are in favor of multiplying and circulating as much as possible those books which relate the history of the Catholic Church of Ireland, of her saints and prelates, her gallant chieftains and noble martyrs, her sufferings and persecutions. The English Catholic tradition, and the Scottish, are unfortunately broken. A dreary gap of three centuries intervenes between the present and the Catholic past; but in Ireland the continuity is perfect from the fifth century to the present moment. This is the great artery of life to the Catholic Church of the British empire and its colonies, and it must not be severed. There is an intense sympathy between the people of the United States and the people of Ireland. This is chiefly a sympathy with their oppressed condition as a people, and with their just demands for expiation and redress for the wrongs they have suffered from the hands of the British government. It would be prudent for the gentlemen of the English parliament to take note of this, and to be wise in time, by conceding all those rights and privileges at once with a good grace, which Ireland is sure to obtain sooner or later, whether parliament is willing or unwilling. This merely political sympathy will, we trust, prepare the way for a higher and holier sympathy with the faith, the constancy, the invincible fortitude of the Irish people as a Catholic nation, the Spartans of a sacred Thermopylae, who have immolated themselves to save the faith. It is time that the American public should learn what is the Irish Version of the History of the Reformation. This presupposes a previous knowledge of the first planting and cultivation of Christianity. When it is seen that the Irish fought and died for the very same religion which was planted among them by their first apostles, it will be easy to judge of the claims which the religion of Elizabeth and Cromwell had upon their submission. The labors of Montalembert are therefore invaluable, as bringing to light the hidden treasures of Irish ecclesiastical history, and in all his great work there is no chapter to be found more charming than the biography of the great patriarch of Iona. We conclude with the eulogium which Fintan, a contemporary monk, pronounced upon St. Columba in an assembly of wise and learned men, and which is justified by the history of his life. "Columba is not to be compared with philosophers and learned men, but with patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The Holy Spirit reigns in him; he has been chosen by God for the good of all; he is a sage among all sages, a king among kings, an anchorite with anchorites, a monk of monks; and in order to bring himself to the level even of laymen, he knows how to be poor of heart among the poor; thanks to the apostolic charity which inspires him, he can rejoice with the joyful, and weep with the unfortunate. And amid all the gifts which God's generosity has lavished on him, the true humility of Christ is so royally rooted in his soul that it seems to have been born with him."

Ecce Homo. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
Strahan & Co., London. G. Routledge & Sons,
416 Broome street, New York. 1868.

On the day of writing this notice, Mr. Gladstone is introducing his motion for overthrowing that monstrous iniquity, the Irish Establishment. We feel, consequently, especially well-disposed toward him. Nevertheless, with all our respect for his talents and character, we cannot help being reminded of his illustrious countryman, that great ornament of the sea-faring profession. Captain Bunsby. Our English brethren, when they take up solid topics, appear to think laborious dulness and tedious obscurity the evidence of deep learning and sound judgment. Their essays are like those of collegians, who affect to write on political or philosophical subjects in an extremely old-mannish, old-cabinet-minister-like style. This is remarkably the case with the venerable university dons who advocate rationalistic opinions. The style of arguing adopted by these worthy and dignified gentlemen bears a striking resemblance to the movements of one who is carefully wending his way among eggs. As an instance, we may cite the Essays and Reviews, perhaps the dullest book ever written, unless the Treatises on Sacred Arithmetic and Mensuration, by Dr. Colenso, may be thought worthy to compete for the prize. The Ecce Homo is not to be placed in precisely the same category. It is, nevertheless, in our humble opinion, a very vague, wearisome, and unsatisfactory book. We cannot account for its popularity in any other way than by ascribing it to the restless, sceptical, misty state of the English mind on religious subjects; the uneasy desire to find out something more than it knows about Christianity and its author. After eighteen centuries have rolled by, the question. Who is Jesus Christ? still remains a puzzle to all those who will not submit to learn from the teacher commissioned by himself. The author of Ecce Homo has endeavored to throw himself back to the time and into the period of the disciples of Christ, to examine with their eyes his words and actions, and from these to abstract a mental conception of his true character. What that conception is, remains as much a puzzle as the gospels themselves are to a rationalist, or the Exodus to Dr. Colenso. The language of Ecce Homo is certainly irreconcilable with the definitions of the Catholic Church respecting the divine personality of Christ. Some of its statements respecting the nature of the work accomplished by him on the earth, and the evidence thereby furnished of his divine mission, are forcible and valuable, and perhaps to rationalists, Unitarians, and doubters, the work may be useful. No one, however, who understands Catholic theology, and believes in the true doctrine of the Incarnation, can read it without a strong sentiment of repugnance and dissatisfaction. Mr. Gladstone, nevertheless, although professing to accept the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, undertakes the defence of the book, and even apologises for its most offensive passages. By doing this he shows that he himself does not grasp the full meaning of the formulas to which he gives his assent; and although he is not a rationalist, yet, from perpetual contact with them, and the influence of that halting, inconsequent state of mind produced by Anglicanism, he has acquired something of that dark-lantern style of which we have spoken above. There are gleams of light and passages of beauty here and there, especially on those pages where the author treats of the Greek Mythology as an imperfect effort to realize the idea of Deity incarnate in human form. As a whole, the essay, which is a mere review of another book, was well enough for a magazine article, but not of sufficient importance to warrant its publication in book form. Every person who acknowledges the true divinity of Jesus Christ while rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, stands in a position logically absurd, and is therefore incapable of adequately advocating the cause of Christ and Christianity against the infidelity of the age. No one but a Catholic, endowed with genius, and fully imbued with the spirit of Catholic theology, can ever write in a satisfactory manner upon the Life of Christ, so as to meet that demand which causes the abortive efforts of unbelievers and half-Christians to find such an extensive circulation.

On the Heights. A Novel.
By Berthold Auerbach.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.

This volume, professing to be a translation from the German, is most thoroughly permeated with German mysticism; one can hardly give it the dignified name of theology. It carries one back in its bewildering metaphysics to the days of The Dial, when every girl of eighteen belonging to a certain clique, was devouring Bettina's correspondence with Goethe, and listening with rapt soul to lectures on "Human Life," from the oracular lips of a favorite seer; discourses utterly beyond the comprehension of the maiden's papa, but which she understood perfectly.

We are led to wonder, in our republican ignorance, if people in court life converse and act in the stilted, theatrical manner in which they are here represented; every person being what in these days would be called "highly organized." In this particular, and in the tedium and repetition of court detail, we were forcibly reminded of the voluminous works of Miss Mühlbach, with this difference, that On the Heights makes no historical claim.

There are, however, very many sweet touches of nature in the book, gems of thought; and now and then a rare pearl of good counsel, near which, in reading, one involuntarily draws a pencil-line, that they may be found again. Maternal love is beautifully portrayed, both in high and low life, in the queen, and in the foster-mother of the prince.

The author evidently, knows but little of the Catholic faith, and less of its results, since the life of the religieuse is continually referred to (with a slight sneer) as "a life in which nothing happens."

We close this volume with a sensation of weary sadness; there seems to run through its pages "the cry of that deep-rooted pain, under which, thoughtful men are languishing," like the distant tones of an AEolian harp wafted on the night breezes. There is a reaching forth in these mystic yearnings for the good, the true, and the enduring, which the priceless gift of faith alone brings to the weary and heavy-laden, in submission to God's appointed teacher, the church.

The mechanical execution of the work is excellent, the type clear, and the double-columed pages furnish a vast amount of reading in a small compass.

Chemical Change in the Eucharist.
From the French of Jacques Abbadie.
By John W. Hamersley, A.M.

Jacques Abbadie was born in Switzerland, in 1654; "studied at Saumur," writes Mr. Hamersley in his preface, "was doctorated at Sedan, and installed pastor of the French (Huguenot) Church of Berlin, at the instance of Count d'Espence."

He left his pastorate, became chaplain to Marshal Schomberg, and came to England with William of Orange in 1688. After Schomberg's death, in the battle of the Boyne, Abbadie was presented to the deanery of Killaloo, in Ireland, where he died in 1727.

His book against transubstantiation in the Eucharist, is such as might be expected from the literary leisure, taste, learning, and piety of one of Schomberg's exemplary camp-followers. We read the book with the hope of finding some objection in it worth a refutation; but we have found nothing but the stale, oft-refuted arguments of Protestants against the real presence. Led by the title of the work, Chemical Change in the Eucharist, we expected to meet some profound chemical discoveries that should at least seem to contradict Catholic belief. But there is not one. There is not even an allusion which would show the author to be conversant with chemistry or any of the natural sciences. Abbadie argues against the Catholic exegesis of the sixth chapter of St. John, and against the words of consecration, "This is my body," in the usual Protestant way. He insists that Christ's words are to be taken figuratively; while Catholics claim that they are to be taken literally.

One general answer will do for all heterodox interpretations of Scripture on this and on other points. If Protestants urge that private reason is the supreme judge of Scripture, how can they deny to Catholics the right to use it? And if the private judgment of Catholics finds that Christ spoke of a real presence in the Holy Eucharist, and that his words are to be taken in their plain, literal signification, why should Protestants object? In point of fact, Catholics do admit private judgment, properly understood, in the interpretation of Scripture. They affirm that the interpretation of the church or of the fathers is identical with the rational exegesis. The interpretation of Protestants is not a rational interpretation, and does not give the true sense of Scripture. They misinterpret the Scriptures by an abuse of private judgment. They gratuitously assume that Catholic interpretation is contrary to the rational sense of the Bible; while Catholics hold that their interpretation alone is rational. As a prudent, sensible man, when he meets with a difficult passage in Homer or Sophocles, consults the best commentators to aid him in discovering the true sense; so, for a much greater reason, should a Christian seek an authoritative explanation of those hard passages of Holy Writ "which the unstable and unlearned wrest to their own destruction." One who denies that there are difficult texts in Scripture can never have read it. From the first text of Genesis to the last in the Apocalypse, the Scripture is replete with difficulties, which even the most learned commentators do not always succeed in explaining.

All Abbadie's scriptural arguments against the real presence may be, therefore, met with one remark. He explains certain texts in a figurative sense. Catholics, however, interpret them to mean what they plainly and literally express. Catholics do not need in this case to appeal to the authority of the church or to the fathers. Christ says, "This is my body;" Catholics believe him. Christ says, "My flesh is meat indeed;" Catholics believe his words. Abbadie and his sect admit that Christ says, "This is my body;" that he affirms his flesh to be meat indeed; yet they will not believe him. Who authorizes them to contradict the express words of Christ? We ask impartial reason to judge between Catholic and Protestant in this controversy.

But where Abbadie shows his complete ignorance of the first elements of the higher sciences is in "Letter Fourth" of his book, p. 98. We quote from Mr. Hamersley's translation. "All our ideas of faith rely solely on sense; and their value to us is measured by its certainty; and to faith, which is a conviction of divine truth, there are four essentials: God exists; he is truthful; he has revealed himself; each mystery of our faith appears in such revelation. Sir—it is noteworthy—that the senses are the sole channels of all those truths, and their SOLE vouchers." Again, "Thus the senses are the media of all evidence." (P. 99.) The materialism of d'Holbach, Cabanis, Helvetius, and Condillac is identical with this doctrine of the doughty dean of Killaloo. If the senses "are the sole channels of truth," instead of being the mere occasions of reflection, then the whole order of intelligible ideas, the ideas of God, spirit, and cause, are illusions. The senses can only tell us the sensible or phenomenal. Now, as the ideas of God, cause, spirit, truth, justice, goodness, substance, etc., are all supersensible, they cannot come from the senses. If the senses "are the media of all evidence," the only things we can know are modes or phenomena, colors, forms, sounds, etc. The senses tell us nothing more. We must, therefore, deny the existence of God, of truth, of goodness, cause, substance, etc.; and turn atheists, pantheists, sceptics, or materialists, as all who logically follow out Abbadie's or Locke's metaphysics really become. The philosophy of the warlike chaplain of Schomberg's army is thus shown to be essentially immoral.

Did Mr. Hamersley know this when he translated the book? We think not, for he is evidently too innocent of logic and too ignorant of truth to be able to understand fully even the arguments of the superficial dean of Killaloo.

We shall make good our assertion by quoting a few of Mr. Hamersley's own references: "In 1845, the pope made the Immaculate Conception a part of the Roman creed and a condition of salvation." (P. 113.) The gentleman probably was thinking of the pope's decree of 1852.

"A.D. 597, Gregory I. instructs St. Augustine to accommodate the ceremonies of the church to heathen rites." (P. 125.).

"The Maronites, originally Monothelites, protected by the Emperor Heraclius, are now incorporated in the church of Rome." (P. 126.)

"A.D. 1295, Boniface VIII. confines ex-pope Celestine V. in a cell about the size of his body, lest he may elect to resume the pontificate he has resigned—guards him night and day with 6 knights and 30 soldiers. Celestine dies of cruelty." (P. 129.)

"Gregory VII. threatens to anathematize all France, unless King Philip abandons simony. (P. 135.) This was one of Gregory's crimes in the judgment of Mr. Hamersley.

"Alexander VI. (Borgia) is elected pope—his Holiness is forthwith adored by the cardinals:" (P. 143.) What idolatry!

"Penance—a sacrament by which venial sins, committed after baptism, are forgiven." (P. 146.)

"The Nestorians were excommunicated A.D. 431, for holding, among other views, two natures of Christ."

"The Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, confirmed the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, which the church had repudiated." (P. 148.)

As instances of schisms in the church, the learned translator cites the following: "Dominicans and Franciscans—on immaculate conception." "Thomists and Scotists—efficacy of grace and immaculate conception." "Jesuits and Jansenists—on the doctrine of grace." (P. 150.)

"Dec. 17, 1866, the leading Romanists of the Council of Baltimore invite the pope by letter to visit the United States." (P. 157.)

"Jesuit pestilence." (P. 159.) "Plague-spots—Roman Catholic churches and institutions." (P. 160.) This is a good instance of Mr. Hamersley's rhetoric.

"The Papal Church in the United States has recently adopted the title of Roman Catholic." Evidence: "It appears in large iron gilt letters over the gate of the asylum in Fifth avenue, New York—Roman Catholic Male Orphan Asylum." (P. 160.) This is one of the plague-spots!

These are but a few of the literary beauties to be found in Mr. Hamersley's additions to Abbadie. A Catholic could afford to smile at both the original and his translator, if, unfortunately, there were not found many persons so credulous as to believe their falsehoods. The original work of Abbadie is tolerable. He attempts to argue; and we have no doubt his military logic was satisfactory enough to the square-headed soldiers of Schomberg's army. Besides, when Abbadie wrote, civilization had not arrived at such a degree of progress as it has now attained. But Mr. Hamersley writes his falsehoods now. His ignorance and fanaticism, of which we have culled but a few of the many instances in his book, are of our own day. We cannot understand why he should repeat them, since there is hardly any moderately educated Protestant who does not know that most of his allegations are false. If there be any so dull or fanatical as to believe them, we feel for them more of pity than contempt.

In conclusion, we regret that the translator does not show as much good sense or taste in choosing the subject as the publishers manifest in the binding and printing of the work. We are sorry to see such fine print wasted on a bad, worthless book. Mr. Hamersley could have found nobler themes in foreign literature, even though they might be the productions of Protestants, to exercise those talents as a translator which he has failed to show as a lover of truth, a logician, or a man of good sense.

Life in the West; or, Stories of the Mississippi Valley.
By N. C. Meeker, Agricultural Editor of the New York Tribune.
New York: Samuel R. Wells.

"A long residence in the Mississippi Valley, frequent journeys through its whole extent, and years of service as the Illinois correspondent of the New York Tribune, have furnished the materials for the following stories." Hence, it is almost unnecessary to state that their claim to our careful consideration rests upon something more substantial than the fact of their being pleasingly told, varied in incident, and unobjectionable in tone. Their real worth, and it is not slight, arises from this, that they are made the agreeable medium of conveying much valuable information concerning "life in the West;" no less the hardships unavoidably to be endured by the emigrant, the difficulties to be overcome, and the dangers to be encountered, than his almost assured ultimate triumph.

Of general interest, but designed especially for those intending to emigrate, is the appendix, containing a brief description of the soil, climate, products, area, and population of each State and territory lying in the great Valley of the Mississippi; and also the locations of the several land-offices where application must be made and all needful information can be obtained.

Mozart: A Biographical Romance.
From the German of Heribert Rau.
By E. R. Sill. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1868.

A poor translation of a frothy production. On the first page, the child, Mozart, is called a "three-years-old son." Mr. Sill evidently does not know that a three-year-old is English for colts and heifers. Mozart's sister is also denominated a "seven-years-old." The writer, if Mr. Sill has translated him correctly, is exceedingly ignorant, or worse. On page 54 we read: "They sought the pope's chair," (that is, the worshippers crowding to St. Peter's for the services on Maundy-Thursday,) "partly because it was the fashion, partly because they wanted to be on hand to see everybody else do it, and partly because, to an Italian, a hundred days' absolution in advance is always a pleasant and convenient thing to have." The recitation of the Tenebrae, in the evening, is called, on page 58, "the performance of Mass." Would it not be well for our enterprising publishers in this enlightened country, to employ a proof-reader who has received a passable education?

The Great Day; or, Motives and Means of Perseverance after First Communion.
Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier. New York, 1868.

A pretty and good little volume, intended for a gift to children, as a memento of the happy day of their first communion. We have only one criticism to make, which is, that its tone of thought is too foreign. We wish that the accomplished translator had made use of the original French only, as matter from which to compile a delightful little book under this title, (a task which she could so admirably perform,) suitable, in the freshness of its thought, to the minds of American children. In lieu, however, of the wished-for better book of Mrs. Sadlier's, we heartily recommend this present volume to the attention of all pastors, parents, and superintendents of Sunday-schools, who will find in it, we are sure, just what very many of them have long desired to procure as a worthy memento for "The Great Day."

Tales from the Diary of a Sister of Mercy.
By C. M. Brame.
New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1868.

We all remember Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician, by Dr. Warren, and the intense interest everybody felt in these sketches of the tragic scenes with which the persons whose profession leads them among the sick, the suffering, and the dying are familiar. This book is on a similar plan, and is composed of graphic descriptions of what a Sister of Mercy may be supposed to see and observe in her charitable ministrations. The light of the Catholic religion thrown in among these painful, tragic scenes, relieves their shadows, and leaves a more healthful impression on the mind; in short, becoming their pathetic effect. Those who love sensation stories will find their taste gratified in this volume, and, at the same time, may be able to derive from it some good moral and religious lessons.

We regret that a notice of The First Report of the Catholic Sunday-School Union was crowded out of the columns of this number. It will appear in our next.—Ed. C. W.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VII., No. 39.—June, 1868.

Edmund Campion.

In the spring of 1580, Elizabeth being then queen of Great Britain, and England being in the midst of the turmoil which accompanied the final establishment of Protestantism as the religion of the realm, two expeditions set out from Rome, to restore the faith in the British isles. One consisted of two thousand armed soldiers, enlisted as a sort of crusaders, and animated by the papal blessing and the promise of indulgences, not to speak of the visions of worldly glory and profit which even soldiers who fight under consecrated banners are apt to find alluring. The other was composed of less than a score of missionaries, Jesuits, secular priests, and others, whose most enticing prospect was one of martyrdom. The soldiers were to land in Ireland and help the rebellion of the Geraldines. The missionaries were to penetrate in disguise into England, and exercise the ministry of the proscribed and persecuted faith in the secrecy of private houses and hidden chambers.

Looking at the history of those times in the light of subsequent experience, it seems hard to account for the policy which could imperil not only the lives of the missionaries, but the cause of the church, by complicating the peaceful embassy of the priests with the mission of war and insurrection. For it was no secret that the troops came from Rome, and that large subsidies from the Roman treasury were sent with them. Associated with them, too, went an eminent ecclesiastic. Dr. Saunders, with the functions of a legate. We must remember, however, that the accession of Elizabeth had never been popularly acquiesced in. Her legitimacy had never been generally acknowledged. Her reign thus far had been a series of rebellions. The party which opposed her had a fair title to the character of belligerents, and the continental powers which espoused their cause were only doing what, by the customs of the age, they had a perfect right to do. The pope had issued a bull, excommunicating the queen, absolving her subjects from their oath of allegiance, and even forbidding them to obey her; and although he had afterward so far modified the bull as to permit the English people to recognize her authority, rebus sic stantibus, "while things remained as they were," he had never ceased, in conjunction with other European powers, to promote attempts in Ireland and elsewhere to overthrow her and place the Queen of Scots upon the throne. At this distance of time, with a line of successors to ratify Elizabeth's title to the crown, and the fact of their failure arguing against the insurgents, it is easy to condemn the papal policy; but we must remember that affairs bore a different aspect then; that Elizabeth's right to the throne was open to question; and that the Catholic faith which she was striving to suppress was still the faith of a large majority of the English people.

We have little to do, however, with this Irish expedition. It was a miserable failure, and its only effect was, to aggravate the sufferings of the Catholics and expose the missionaries to increased danger. Our purpose in this article is rather to trace the history of the more peaceful and strictly religious embassy, so far as it bore upon the life of the illustrious martyr from whom it derives its chief renown.

Edmund Campion, [Footnote 55] the son of a London bookseller, was born on the 25th of January, 1539, (O. S.,) the year which witnessed the commencement of the English persecution, of which he was destined to be a victim, and the solemn approval of the Society of Jesus, of which he was to be the first English martyr. At St. John's College, Oxford, where he was educated and obtained a fellowship, he was so much admired for his gift of speech and grace of eloquence, that young men imitated not only his phrases but his gait, and revered him as a second Cicero. It was the year after he obtained his fellowship that Queen Mary died and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. The new sovereign allowed but a few weeks to pass before she manifested her preference for the Protestant doctrines; yet there was no attempt at first to force the heresy upon the university of Oxford, her Majesty wisely trusting to the insidious influences of time, persuasion, and high example to bring the students and professors over to her views. It is no great wonder, perhaps, that Campion, intoxicated by the incense of adulation and enervated by the worldly comfort of his position, shut his eyes to the dreadful gulf of heresy into which the English Church was drifting, and seemed hardly to realize the necessity which was being forced upon him of choosing between God and the queen. He was not required for some years to take any oath at variance with his fidelity to the church. So he gave up the study of theology, to which he had hitherto devoted himself, and applied his mind to secular learning. He was a layman, and controversy might be left to the priests. When he took his degree in 1564, he was induced to subscribe to the oath against the pope's supremacy, and by the statutes of his college he was also compelled to resume the study of divinity; yet he still managed to stave off important questions and to confine his reading to the old settled dogmas which had no direct bearing upon the questions of the day.

[Footnote 55: Edmund Campion: A Biography.
By Richard Simpson. 8vo, pp. 387.
London: Williams & Norgate.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]

The time came, at last, when the theological neutral ground had been thoroughly explored, and Campion turned to the Fathers. In their venerable company he seemed to grow more thoughtful and conscientious. The problem of his life now was not how he could postpone serious considerations, and shake off religious responsibility, but how he could reconcile true principles with false practice; how he could remain in the Established Church of England, and yet hold to all the old Catholic doctrines which the Establishment denied. His position, in fact, was almost identical with that of the modern Tractarians, and his college at Oxford was the home of a party which entertained nearly the same opinions. There was one of the Elizabethan bishops, Cheney of Gloucester, who, having retained a good deal of the orthodox faith, sympathized heartily with Campion's aspirations and perplexities. He was the actual founder of the school represented in later times by Newman and Pusey, and he had fixed upon Campion to continue and perfect the work after he himself had passed away. The bishop persuaded our young scholar to take deacons' orders, so that he might preach and obtain preferment. But the effect of this step upon Campion was such as Cheney little anticipated. Almost immediately troubles beset his mind. He found his new dignity odious and abominable. The idea of preferment became hateful to him. He wished rather to live as a simple layman, and in 1569 he resigned his appointments at the university and went to Dublin, where it seemed that a more agreeable career awaited him. A project was then afoot for restoring the old Dublin university founded by Pope John XXI., but for some years extinct. The principal mover in the matter was the Recorder of Dublin and Speaker of the House of Commons, James Stanihurst, a zealous Catholic, and the father of one of Campion's pupils. In his house Campion received a generous welcome, and there he remained for a while, leading a kind of monastic life, and waiting for the opening of the new seminary, in which he hoped to find congenial employment. The scheme fell through, however, and the chief cause of its failure was the secret hostility of the government to Stanihurst, and the Lord-Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, who were most actively concerned in it, and to Campion, who was to have the principal share in its direction. Campion was not yet reconciled to the church, but he was already distrusted as a papist, and only saved from arrest by the protection of Sidney. Such protection, however, could not avail him long. The rebellion of some of the English Catholic nobles, the publication of the pope's bull against Elizabeth which Felton had posted on the Bishop of London's gates, and the designs of the king of Spain upon Ireland, had roused a persecution, and Campion was one of those especially designated to be arrested. The Lord-Deputy found means to warn him a few hours before the officers arrived, and he saved himself by flight. For two or three months he dodged the pursuivants about Ireland, lurking in the houses of his friends, and working, in the intervals of the pursuit, at a History of Ireland, which he had begun while lodging with Stanihurst. At last, seeing that he must soon be captured if he remained on the island, and fearing to compromise the friends who gave him shelter, he resolved to return to England, and accordingly, in the disguise of a lackey, took ship at the little port of Tredagh, near Dublin. The officers came on board to search for him, and questioned everybody on the vessel except the fugitive himself. They seized the manuscripts of his history, and then went away, cursing "the seditious villain Campion." He reached England in time to witness the trial of Dr. Storey, who was executed for the faith in June, 1571. We are told nothing of the progress of his conversion after he left Oxford, but by this time it was complete, and he had resolved to repair to the English college at Douai, there to fit himself for more effective labors in the Catholic cause. In mid-channel the ship in which he had taken passage was overhauled by an English frigate, and Campion, having no passport, and being, moreover, suspected and denounced by his fellow-passengers as a papist, was taken off and carried back to Dover. The captain appropriated all his prisoner's money, and then set out to conduct him to London. It was soon evident, however, that the officer cared more for the purse than the captive; and without a word being said on either side, Campion understood that he might run away provided he said nothing about the money. This was enough. He escaped in one direction while his guard pretended to pursue him in another; and having obtained a fresh supply of money from some of his friends, succeeded at last in making his escape over to France.

He staid long enough at Douai to complete his course of scholastic theology and to be ordained sub-deacon. After the lapse of a little more than a year, he resolved to go to Rome with the purpose of becoming a Jesuit. His biographers generally attribute this determination to the remorse which he still felt on account of his Anglican deaconship; but Mr. Simpson is inclined to lay rather more stress upon a disagreement between Campion and Dr. Allen, the president of Douai College, upon political questions. The friendly and even affectionate relations of these two eminent men were never interrupted; but Dr. Allen had many opinions which his disciple could not share. Campion, devoted as he was to the church and the Holy See, was always loyally obedient to the civil powers of his native country, save when the laws were in conflict with his conscience. Allen, who had been many years in exile, was a devoted servant of Philip of Spain, and was thick in the plots for the overthrow of Elizabeth and the various schemes for foreign invasion. It is not impossible that a divergence of sentiment on some such point as this may have influenced Campion's decision, if not wholly, at least in part. However it was, the two friends bade each other an affectionate farewell, and the future martyr, in the guise of a poor pilgrim, set out afoot for Rome. In shabby garments, dusty and footsore, he entered the holy city in the autumn of 1572, only a few days before the death of St. Francis Borgia, third general of the Society of Jesus. A successor to the saint was not chosen until April, 1573, and meanwhile Campion had to wait. He was the first postulant admitted by the new general. Father Mercurianus, and soon afterward he was sent to Brünn in Moravia to pass his novitiate. In a letter which he wrote to his brethren there, after he had taken his vows, we find a pleasing picture of the humble and happy life which he spent in that retreat. "O dear walls!" he exclaims, "that once shut me up in your company! Pleasant recreation-room, where we talked so holily! Glorious kitchen, where the best friends—John and Charles, the two Stephens, Sallitzi, Finnit and George, Tobias and Gaspar—fight for the saucepans in holy humility and charity unfeigned! How often do I picture to myself one returning with his load from the farm, another from the market; one sweating stalwartly and merrily under a sack of rubbish, another under some other toil!

...

I have been about a year in religion, in the world thirty-five; what a happy change if I could say I had been a year in the world, in religion thirty-five!" There is something very touching and instructive in the record of his first years in the Society of Jesus; and the chroniclers of his order, who reckon it among the chief glories of the brotherhood in Bohemia that the English martyr received his religious training among them, and taught them at the same time by his illustrious example, have set down that record with careful and affectionate minuteness. How the man whom Oxford had revered as a guide was content in a moment to become the humblest of pupils; how he by whom the young nobility of England had set the fashion of their thought, their reading, their elocution, their very walk and manner, was happy in the privilege of being allowed to put on a dirty apron, roll up his sleeves, and scour saucepans in the scullery—these are the chief points in the story of his life at Brünn, and afterward at Prague, whither he was sent to teach rhetoric. It is a strange life to read about, yet it probably differed little from the ordinary life of his brethren in religion, and hundreds of Jesuit houses to-day exhibit no doubt the same model of industry, devotedness, and humility. For a certain number of hours daily he was in the class-room; when his pupils went to play, he went to wash dishes in the kitchen. He was called upon for poems, orations, and sacred dramas, to celebrate the college festivals; for funeral discourses on the death of great persons. He taught catechism to the children; he visited the hospitals and prisons; he preached; he heard confessions; he spent incredible pains in preparing the young Jesuits for the work of disputing successfully with heretics when they should be sent out to their various fields of duty. His brethren were amazed that any one man should have strength to carry so many burdens. He seems, however, to have borne up well under them. "About myself," he writes to Father Parsons, "I would only have you know that from the day I arrived here I have been extremely well—in a perpetual bloom of health, and that I was never at any age less upset by literary work than now, when I work hardest. We know the reason. But, indeed, I have no time to be sick, if any illness wanted to take me." It was while Campion was thus occupied at Prague, that Sir Philip Sidney, who had known him at Oxford, came over from England as ambassador. The young nobleman had many an interview with his old friend, and seems to have awakened in Campion a strong hope of his conversion—a prospect to which his friends and political associates were by no means blind; for they watched him so closely that the interviews between the ambassador and the Jesuit were not managed without a great deal of difficulty. Campion writes to one John Bavand, commending "this young man, so wonderfully beloved and admired by his countrymen," to the earnest prayers of all good Catholics. He saw what an effect upon the faith in England the conversion of a nobleman of Sidney's brilliant parts and distinguished position must have, and the re-establishment of the faith in his native island was something which he had especially at heart. His letters are full of anxiety on this score. He speaks of catching and subduing his recreant countrymen "by the prayers and tears at which they laugh;" but we find no political allusions, and it is plain enough that, in the various schemes for Catholic insurrections and for foreign invasions, he had neither share nor heart. He had been between five and six years at Prague when he was summoned to Rome to take part in the mission about to be sent forth for the conversion of England. The little band of heroes comprised Dr. Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, who had long been residing on the continent, several English secular priests, old men who had been in exile, and young men fresh from their studies, a few zealous laymen, and three Jesuits, Campion, Parsons, and a lay brother named Ralph Emerson. To assist them in their labors, collect alms for them, and find safe hiding-places, a Catholic Association had just been organized in England by George Gilbert, a young man of property, whom Father Parsons had converted in Rome the preceding year. The Jesuits were furnished with a paper of instructions for their guidance.

Father Parsons was a younger man than Campion, and had been a shorter time than he in the Society; yet there were good reasons why he should be appointed the superior in the mission. He was not only zealous and devout, but he had a good knowledge of men and affairs, he was well versed in the ways of cities; he was adroit, versatile, and prudent; and he was somewhat familiar with the schemes of the pope and other Catholic powers against the government of Elizabeth. A knowledge of these secret designs would have been but a sorry safeguard had he fallen into the hands of the authorities of the crown, and the consciousness must have heightened his sense of the danger incurred in the expedition; but Parsons had all the courage of a martyr, though he did not win a martyr's crown. The party left Rome on the 18th of April, 1580, and were not more than fairly started on their journey when the English Secretary, Walsingham received from his spies a full description of them and a list of their names.

Passing through Geneva, they resolved to have an interview with Theodore Beza; and the account of it gives a curious picture of the state of society in those times, and of the manner in which theological controversy mingled with the ordinary affairs of life. The travellers made no secret of their religion, though they disguised their persons and calling. Campion dressed himself as an Irish servant, waiting on Mr. John Pascal, a lay gentleman of their party, and the only one who failed in the final day of trial. Sherwin, one of the secular priests, used to relate with uncontrollable merriment how naturally Campion played his part. Beza, under one pretext or another, got rid of them as politely as possible, and promised to send to their inn an English scholar of his, the son of Sir George Hastings. Instead of young Hastings, there came his governor, Mr. Brown, and a young Englishman named Powell, and we have a strange account of the priests disputing hotly in the streets of Geneva with the two Protestants until almost midnight, and challenging Beza to a public controversy, with the proviso that he who was justly convicted in the opinion of indifferent judges should be burned alive in the market-place! Powell had known Campion at Oxford, so the soi-disant servant kept out of his sight, and when the former gentleman offered to accompany the missionaries a little way on their road next morning, Campion was sent forward in advance. But meeting on the road a minister studying his sermon, the temptation was too strong for the enthusiastic Jesuit, and he buckled with him at once. The rest of the party came up while they were still at it, hammer and tongs, and Powell recognized Campion, and saluted him with great affection. After that, the missionaries made a pilgrimage of eight or nine miles over difficult paths to St. Clodovens in France, by way of penance for their curiosity.

We have said that Parsons was privy to some of the political expeditions against England; but he had no knowledge of the one which set out about the same time that he did, and the news, which he learned on his arrival at Rheims, filled him with dismay. The queen had issued a proclamation which plainly indicated a purpose to proceed against the Catholics with increased severity, and the peril of the undertaking had become greater than ever. It does not appear, however, that one of the company faltered. Dr. Goldwell had been obliged to turn back and defer his voyage—which, indeed, he never made at all; but others joined the mission, and among them was a fourth Jesuit, Father Thomas Cottam. At Rheims, the party broke up to find their way across to England by different routes. Campion, Parsons, and Brother Ralph Emerson were to go by way of St. Omer, Calais, and Dover. Parsons crossed first, disguised as a soldier returning from the Low Countries, and in his captain's uniform passed inspection so easily and was so well treated by the searcher at Dover that he bespoke that officer's courtesy for his friend, "Mr. Edmunds, a diamond-merchant," who was shortly to follow him. He reached London without trouble; but his dress was outlandish, and people were unusually fearful and suspicious, so he was turned away from the inns. He knew of a Catholic gentleman, however, who was held in the Marshalsea prison for his faith, and he applied to see him. Through him he was brought into communication with George Gilbert and the Catholic Association, who had apartments in the house of the chief pursuivant, where up to this time, thanks in part to the connivance of influential friends, they had managed to have a daily celebration of Mass.

Father Parsons had induced the friendly searcher at Dover to send over a letter for him to "Mr. Edmunds," at St. Omer, bidding him make haste to London with his diamonds, and Campion, as soon as he received it, set out with Brother Ralph. But, in the mean time, the English officers had grown more strict; the searcher had been reprimanded for letting certain persons pass who were supposed to be priests; and there was a report, moreover, that a brother of Dr. Allen was coming over, and his description agreed pretty well with Campion's appearance. The two Jesuits were accordingly arrested and taken before the mayor; but they were dismissed after a short detention, and the next day were welcomed by the association in London.

This pious club was such an admirable illustration of the truth that the salvation of souls is not the exclusive duty or privilege of the priesthood that we may spare a moment from our survey of Campion's life to glance at its history and character. The missionary career is open to all. Members of religious orders, secular priests, men of the world, soldiers, lawyers, shop-keepers, doctors, laborers, farmers, the beggars on the street, the fashionable lady in her carriage—we can all do something for the advancement of the great cause; and if we only knew how to systematize our efforts, how to economize our zeal, the Catholic Association of Campion's day is an evidence of the enormous service we might render to the church. The founder of the association, George Gilbert, had been anxious, immediately after his conversion, to expend his first fervor in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but Father Parsons persuaded him rather to return to England and spend his money there in advancing the Catholic cause. He drew together a number of young men of his own rank in life and with somewhat of his own spirit. They hired rooms together; they bribed officers whose vigilance they could not elude; they gave shelter to priests; they furnished places for the celebration of Mass; they kept the Catholics in communication with each other; they supplied the missionaries with money; and they organized the tours which the priests made through the country. The Catholics were beset with spies, and the government held out strong inducements to weak brethren to betray their pastors. It was necessary, therefore, that the priests should be extremely cautious to whom they trusted themselves; and since they could not carry credentials, it was necessary, too, that the gentlemen who harbored them should be quite sure whom they were receiving. This perfect intelligence could only be obtained by a thorough organization of the Catholic gentry; and it was not the least part of the duty of the association to see that, whenever a priest travelled, some one should be with him as at once an endorser and a guide. It was their part, likewise, to undertake the preliminary work of converting heretics. In those fearful times a doubting Protestant could not be admitted to see a priest until he had given some evidence of the sincerity of his search after truth. The members of the club took him in hand first, and brought him to the priest when they felt it to be safe.

When Campion reached the asylum of their rooms in London, Parsons had already gone on a tour in the country, leaving word for his companion to await his return. There was a great desire among the Catholics who had learned of the arrival of the missionaries to hear the famous preacher with whose eloquence years ago Oxford had resounded, but it was no easy matter to find a place where he might speak in safety. At last, arrangements were made for a sermon in the servants' hall of a private house, and there, while trusty gentlemen watched all the avenues of approach, Campion delivered a discourse with which all the Catholic circles of London were soon ringing. The faithful and the wavering rushed to him in crowds. The government got wind of what was going on, and redoubled their exertions to entrap him. Several priests were captured, and many Catholics were thrown into prison. The danger of remaining in London soon became too pressing to be disregarded. So, after a council had been held, several questions of discipline settled, and each man's special work assigned, the priests all went away to different parts of the kingdom.

The pursuit was much hotter after Campion than after any of his brethren, and it was intensified by the imprudence of a Catholic layman who had allowed a document entrusted to his care by the missionary, to be made public. This was a paper drawn up by Campion on the eve of the separation of their little company, setting forth the reasons of their coming to England, and inviting the Protestants to a public conference. It was intended to be used only in case he should be arrested; but Thomas Pounde, to whom, for greater surety, he had given a copy, thought it too good to be kept entirely secret, and thus it soon came to the hands of the government. This, of course, increased their anxiety to capture a man whom, by his personal influence, his eloquence, and his still brilliant reputation at Oxford, they felt to be especially dangerous. Proclamation followed proclamation; the pursuivants were unceasing in activity; spies were sent into every quarter of the kingdom; some of the Catholics themselves were corrupted; watchers were set about the houses of the principal Catholic gentlemen. Many a time was the Mass or the sermon interrupted by the coming of the officers and the priest compelled to take refuge in the woods. Once, when the pursuivants came upon him suddenly at the house of a private gentleman, a maid-servant, to make them think he was merely one of the retainers, affected to be angry with him and pushed him into a pond. The disguise was effectual, and the good father escaped.

All this while he was engaged in writing his famous book against the Protestants, known as the Decem Rationes. It was finished about Easter, 1581, and sent to London for the approval of Parsons, who had a private printing-press in a hidden place, whereat he had already published certain writings of his own. By great efforts a number of copies were got ready for the commencement at Oxford in June; and when the audience assembled at the exercises, they found the benches strewed with the books, to the reading of which they gave far more attention than to the performances of the students. The title-page bore the imprint of Douai, but the government was not long in ascertaining by the examination of experts that the work had been done in England.

Campion had gone to London while his book was passing through the press, to superintend the correction of the sheets; but the danger was now so imminent that Parsons ordered him away into Norfolk, in company with Brother Ralph Emerson. The two fathers rode out of the city together at daylight on the 12th of July, and, after an affectionate farewell, parted company, the one going to the north, the other back into the town.

The Judas who was to betray him, however, was on the alert. This was one George Eliot, formerly steward to Mr. Roper in Kent, and latterly a servant of the widow of Sir William Petre. He was a Catholic, but a man of bad character, and had been for some time a paid informer to the Earl of Leicester. How he knew of Campion's visit to Lyford is not certain; but he had been looking for him at several Catholic houses in the neighborhood, and on the 16th, armed with a warrant and attended by a pursuivant in disguise, he presented himself at the gate just as Mass was about to begin, and applied for admission. One of the servants knew him for a Catholic, but little suspected his real character; so with much ado he got leave to pass in, having first sent off the pursuivant to a magistrate for a posse comitatus. He heard the Mass, he heard Campion's sermon; but he was afraid to make the arrest until the magistrate arrived. As soon as the service was over, he hurried off. The company—comprising some sixty persons besides the members of the household—were at dinner when word was brought that the place was surrounded by armed men. After a long search, Campion and three other priests were found concealed in a closet, and taken prisoners.

The prisoners were carried up to London and committed to the Tower, making their entrance into the city through the midst of a hooting mob, Campion leading the procession with his elbows tied behind him, his hands tied in front, his feet fastened under his horse's belly, and a placard on his hat, inscribed "Campion, the seditious Jesuit." The governor, Sir Owen Hopton, at first placed Campion in the narrow dungeon known as "Little-ease," in which one could neither stand nor lie at length. He remained there until the fourth day, when, with great secrecy, he was conducted to Leicester's house, and courteously received by the earl and several other persons of mark, and shortly found himself in the presence of the queen. He gave a truthful account of his motives in coming to England; he satisfied Elizabeth, as it would appear, of his loyalty; and could he have accepted the conditions proposed to him, he might have been dismissed with honors and riches. As it was, Hopton received orders to treat him more leniently. It was now the purpose of the government to coax him into compliance.

Failing to shake his constancy, the next thing was to destroy his reputation. It was given out that he was on the point of recanting; that he had betrayed his friends; that he had divulged the names of the gentlemen who harbored him. To give color to these charges, a great many Catholics were arrested, in consequence, it was said, of Campion's confession. For a while these infamous charges, fortified with plausible confirmation, were generally believed; but it was soon ascertained that the betrayal had been wrung from some of Campion's companions on the rack. To render the missionary contemptible, it was thought necessary to answer his challenge for a public disputation in some way or another, and a large number of the most eminent Anglican divines were appointed to meet him in a public hall and discuss the chief points of controversy. They had all the time they wanted to prepare, free access to libraries, and every possible favor. Campion was not informed of the arrangement until two hours before the assembly opened. Then, with his limbs still smarting from the torment of the rack, he was placed in the middle of the room, without books, without even a table to lean upon, with no assistance whatever, except the assistance of heaven. The dispute continued several days. It was distinguished, as might have been supposed, by gross unfairness and bad language on the part of the Protestants, while Campion conciliated all honest-minded listeners, not only by the acuteness of his answers, but by his mild and affectionate spirit. Though he had been educated to a familiarity with dialectics, and lived in a day when controversy was an almost universal passion, he was far from being a disputatious man, and the odium theologicum had no place in his warm and tender heart. With all the advantage given to the Protestant side, it was evident that the Catholics were profiting by the conferences, and the government abruptly closed them. But it was too late. Campion's fame was restored; the slanders against him had been refuted; and the popular enthusiasm broke forth in ballads, of which Mr. Simpson gives a sample.

Nothing remained now but to try him for treason. It was first proposed to indict him for having on a certain day in Oxfordshire traitorously pretended to have power to absolve her majesty's subjects from their allegiance, and endeavored to attach them to the obedience of the pope and the faith of the Roman church; but this was too plainly a religious prosecution. A plot was therefore forged, which it was pretended that Campion, Allen, Morton, Parsons, and fourteen priests and others then in custody, had concerted at Rome and Rheims to dethrone the queen and raise a civil war. On this charge Campion, Sherwin, Cottam, and five others, were arraigned at Westminster Hall on the 14th of November. When Campion was called upon, according to custom, to hold up his hands in pleading, his arms were so cruelly wounded by the rack that he could not lift them without assistance. The trial took place on the 20th. The principal witnesses for the crown were George Eliot and three hired wretches named Munday, Sledd, and Caddy, who pretended to have observed the meetings of the conspirators at Rome; but their testimony was so weak, and the answers of Campion so admirable, that when the jury retired it was generally believed in court that the verdict must be one of acquittal. Court and jury, however, had been bought beforehand. The prisoners were all found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Then Campion broke forth in a loud hymn of praise, "Te Deum laudamus" and Sherwin and others took up the song, until the multitude were visibly affected.

After he had been remanded to the Tower, the traitor Eliot came to his cell, and Campion received him so sweetly, forgiving his offence, and offering to provide for him an asylum with a Catholic noble in Germany, whither he might escape from the odium and danger which haunted him at home, that the keeper, who witnessed the interview was induced by it to become a Catholic. The few days which intervened between conviction and death were passed by the holy man in fasting and other mortifications. The execution was appointed for the 29th of November. Campion, Sherwin, and Briant were to suffer together. At the execution Campion was interrupted by a long dialogue respecting his alleged treason, and subjected to a great deal of questioning. Somebody asked him to pray for the queen. While he was doing so, the cart was drawn away, amid the tears and groans of the multitude, and his body left dangling in the air.

So ended the good fight. Sherwin and Briant met their fate with like joy and constancy, and many another good priest and devoted layman trod afterward in the same awful but glorious path. And as it has been since the days of St. Stephen, the blood of the martyrs proved the seed of the church. Henry Walpole estimated that no fewer than ten thousand persons were converted by the spectacle of Champion's death. That is probably an exaggeration; but it is certain that the execution had a marked effect upon the progress of the faith in England, and covered the Anglican clergy with an odium from which they were long in recovering.

Of the life by Mr. Simpson, upon which we have so freely drawn for the materials of this hasty sketch, we must not close without a word of praise. Written originally for a monthly periodical, and long interrupted by the failure of that publication, it lacks the neat finish and compactness which the author would probably have given it, had it been composed under more favorable circumstances. But it has evidently been prepared with great industry; it is written in a good style; and with a little judicious pruning and rearrangement, it will make one of the most interesting of modern religious biographies.

The Catholic Sunday-School Union. [Footnote 56]

[Footnote 56: First Report of the Catholic Sunday-School Union, of the city of New York. January 1, 1868.]

Few of the evidences of the zealous spirit which is stirred up in these latter days, have given us more unfeigned pleasure than the information which this report conveys. The Sunday-School Union began as all Catholic works begin, has prospered thus far as they prosper, and will share in their triumph. A few earnest souls, observing how much more good could be accomplished in the catechism-classes if the exercises and methods of teaching were made more systematic and co-operative, met together, on the evening of July 9th, 1866, debated the subject, formed resolutions, went to work, and now the catechetical education of the 20,237 children reported from eighteen Sunday-schools of this city, (about one half of the whole number,) is practically under the control of this admirable association. The good fruits of their labors are already noticeable in the more regular attendance of the children, the conferences of teachers for mutual instruction and encouragement, the better regulated programme of exercises, and the increased interest manifested in the schools by all who are in any way connected with them.

The competent knowledge which our people, as a mass, have of their religion, of the dogmas of faith—knowledge which they are bound to have under pain of sin—and that other "knowledge unto salvation" which is shown in the faithful performance of their Christian duties, depends, as all know, upon the catechetical instruction they receive in youth. Priests may preach sermon after sermon, and each and every such discourse may be well calculated to enlighten the mind and move the heart; but as a rule, all sermons nowadays suppose the hearers to be already in possession of Christian principles, and disciplined to the practices of a Christian life. Sound and thorough catechetical instruction is, then, one of the primary duties of a pastor of souls. That each pastor should assume the whole of this labor to himself is simply impossible. Those of the laity who by their character and education are fitted to be his coadjutors in this pastoral duty, must therefore be called upon to aid him in it. The time when it is feasible to assemble children together for religious instruction is on Sunday. Hence the Sunday-school and its corps of lay teachers; both of necessity, as experience has shown, for every parish, if the people are to have, as they ought to have, a befitting knowledge of their religion—if they are to be indoctrinated with its spirit, and receive its ministrations by a devout, conscientious attendance upon its worship, and a due appreciation of, and worthy preparation for, the holy sacraments.

The first thought which naturally presents itself in reference to these lay coadjutors of the clergy, is that of their competence and fitness to teach. We do not care to send our children to be educated by any and every schoolmaster. We not only ask, Is he capable? but we ask, Who is he, and what is he? If these questions may be very properly put concerning a teacher of geography and arithmetic, we may be pardoned for asking them concerning one who professes to teach Christian doctrine and morality. Is he well versed in the truths of faith himself, and, if you please, what is his own moral character?

The Sunday-school is an excellent institution, a necessary institution in our times; but if it is to be of any value, teachers, who are in the first place competent for the task, and who in the second place are practical Christians, must be secured. In small parishes, the pastor may possibly find a sufficient number who possess all the requisite qualifications, (although, so far, our experience has been to the contrary,) but in large and populous parishes, such as are found in all our cities, it is plain that a sufficient number are not easily obtained for the purpose, nor will those who are in all respects fitted for the work and are ready to answer the call of the pastor, be able to control and reduce the heterogeneous elements of a city Sunday-school to any order or regular observance of rules laid down by the pastor, or devised by themselves, without mutual co-operation, counsel, and a systematic organization. Besides, into a corps of such teachers, who are not themselves subjected to some organized form of association, persons wholly incompetent or deficient in moral standing will intrude, and prove either a hinderance to others, or do positive harm.

When chance-comers offer their services as teachers in his Sunday-school, it is difficult if not impossible for the pastor to examine them in order to test their knowledge before accepting them, and it may be equally difficult for him to find out what may be their moral worth. Their daily lives are, as a rule, better known to the members of his congregation than they are to him. In the ill-regulated voluntary system which has hitherto been so common amongst us, many evils have resulted from this which were unavoidable. Teachers of religion ought to be themselves good exemplars of it. Children learn at the Sunday-school a good deal more than the verbal answer to as many questions as are printed in the catechism. Those who occupy the office of teacher exert a moral influence over the children. Example is the master-teacher, and bad example will teach (we are sorry to say) quite as well as good example. You cannot gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. During the time that a man or woman is engaged in conversation with children, much of his or her own character is infused into the minds of their youthful companions by words, gestures, looks, and manner. Shall I permit my children to be thus placed one whole hour every week, under the influence of an ignorant man, a non-practical Catholic, and possibly a person of vicious habits and of vulgar demeanor—a person whom I could not allow my children to converse with at all, in the street or elsewhere, outside of the Sunday-school room? Certainly not. I must have some guarantee that my children shall have such associations as I can approve of, as well in the Sunday-school as in any other place where they may happen to be.

One who might make such reflections as the foregoing need occupy no higher position in society than that of being a good Christian, watchful over the souls of his little ones, and anxious to guard them from contamination with persons ignorant of the faith in which he wishes them to be educated, or such as by their personal want of piety are certain to damage the growth of it in the souls of the children he presumes to instruct.

If we mistake not, these considerations were in part those which animated the zealous and worthy founders of the Sunday-School Union, whose first report lies before us. This appears to us in the pages of the report, especially under the head of "objects." We quote:

"The objects of the Sunday-school Union are of a religious, educational, and social character. The fundamental object is, of course, the benefit and improvement of the Sunday-schools; the secondary end is the association of the Catholic young men of the city, in a manner sanctioned by religion, for purposes of mutual acquaintance and improvement, and the creation of a common tie of sympathy and interest, such as should exist between them as members of the same, One, Holy, and Universal Church. By the comparisons of systems, and experience, and through the increased opportunities of receiving advice and counsel from the clergy, improvements have been introduced in many of the schools, and the teachers have been led to take greater interest in their duties."

We need only quote to ourselves the trite old proverb, that "Birds of a feather," etc., to feel assured that the "Union" will remove in great part the dangers arising from incompetence and unfitness on the part of teachers, to which we have alluded. The leading spirits of an association of this kind will impress their own character upon the whole body, and we have the utmost confidence that such persons will be of the right stamp, young men of solid piety, of sufficient knowledge, and animated by the highest and purest motives. They will draw to them other young men of like character and dispositions with themselves. Association will stimulate exertion, promote harmony, and be productive of the best and happiest results; not only for the children, but, what is of no little moment to us, for the young men themselves.

Under their intelligent direction the Sunday-school will assume a higher standard of religious education. It has too long been deemed sufficient to teach the children the catechism as one teaches parrots, getting them to repeat a certain answer to a given question, without stopping to consider if the scholars have any intelligent apprehension of the meaning of either question or answer. We remember being present in a Sunday-school when the following instruction was overheard by us:

Sunday-School Teacher.
"Are we bound to obey the commandments of the church?"

Boy.
"A—a, because—a—" (gives it up.)

Teacher, (speaking as rapidly as a clerk of the Senate, and looking everywhere but at the pupil.)
"Yes, because Christ has said to the pastors of his church, he that hears you hears me, and he that despises you despises me." (Then with a savage look at the child,) "Now, sir!"

Boy,(whining.)
"Yes, sir—because—here's you and here's me. He despises you and he despises me."

Boy's ears cuffed with the catechism.

Yet it must be confessed that the recitation of the answer by the teacher was pretty faithfully imitated by the child, who aimed at catching a certain number of sounds and repeating them, without thinking of their meaning.

It is very well that the children should learn to recite portions of the catechism which they have learned by rote; but this will not suffice to give them an intelligent comprehension of the truths of religion. There is hardly a question and response in the catechism which does not need some additional explanation and illustration suited to their capacities. This is no easy task, and one that might well engage the highest cultivated minds. Teachers must therefore themselves be taught. No one can impart that which he does not possess. We are glad, therefore, to see that one of the objects of our Sunday-School Union is of an "educational" character.

The object which is denominated "religious" is also of primary importance. The Sunday-school teacher is a teacher of religion in more senses than in imparting a mere verbal knowledge of the doctrines of religion. It comes properly within his sphere to edify his pupils by holy words, good counsel, and good example. If he does not so edify them, he will infallibly do the contrary. Our experience leads us to assert that there is no middle term here between edification and disedification. He who has no words of holiness and sweet Christian counsel in his mouth, is pretty sure of having words and counsel which smack of the world and its ungodly principles. Let no one imagine that he can assume for the time and occasion the tone, speech, and manner of a good, pious Christian, if he be not one in reality. Children have the keenest scent for hypocrisy. They instinctively mark and loathe a Pecksniff or a Chadband. The lessons of piety, the words of kindly warning or encouragement, the appeals to their Christian sentiment, falling from the lips of men who have no solid piety, and whose ordinary daily life is little better than that of a respectable heathen, if as good, will have no other effect than to excite the sceptical sneers of youths who are not to be deceived by sham appearances.

Our Sunday-schools, therefore, urgently demand the aid of "religious" teachers; we mean teachers who are practical Christians themselves, and carry out in their lives the lessons they are desirous of teaching others. They need teachers who are more than Catholics by profession. In a Sunday-school which is fortunate enough to possess teachers of religion who are men of living faith, devout, prayerful, scrupulous, and exact in the performances of their religious duties, exhibiting in their manner a deep reverence for holy things, modesty, patience, benignity, earnestness, and zeal for the glory of God, there will the children also be found exact types of their spiritual instructors.

The Sunday-School Union will form a corps of just such men. It will find itself composed of members who are moved by the Holy Spirit of God to take some part in this important work, and who will engage in it as a labor of love, in the spirit of sacrifice and apostolic zeal. They will, for the most part, bring hearts well prepared for it; but the Union will itself do much toward sustaining and advancing the spiritual good of its members. The most noble spectacle to be presented in this world of temptation and sin, is a band of young men, strong in the faith and loyal to the holy traditions of religion emulating each other in the practice of virtue and works of Christian charity. Such is the spectacle which this association is striving to present to our eyes, and our prayers should not be wanting that God may strengthen them and enlarge the sphere of their holy labors.

The third object spoken of is the "social" character which the Union proposes. We think we understand this, and have already hinted at it. They aim at making the tone of their association high and select. And this is a point worthy of our reflection. Children naturally imitate the manners of their elders, particularly of those with whom they are associated in the capacity of pupils. Let the teacher be rough, boorish, and uncouth in his deportment, negligent in his personal appearance, unceremonious and irreverent in the church, unguarded in his language, of an ungoverned temper, tardy in his attendance, and distracted in his instructions, you will find that the class of which he has unfortunately the charge will very soon be an exact copy of himself. We commiserate the Sunday-school where even one such teacher is to be found. He and his ill-regulated and worse-behaved class are a positive hinderance to the good order of the whole school, and the sooner he is got rid of the better. The Union, by its power of associating like to like, will eliminate this worthless class of individuals, and substitute in their stead punctual, earnest, courteous, self-denying, and reverent-minded teachers, whose very presence in the Sunday-school will be an example of deportment becoming the Christian and the gentleman, commanding respect, obedience, and attention on the part of all the scholars, and the esteem of his fellow-teachers. What affection, too, the children instinctively bestow upon such!

The love for these young souls, of which their heart is full, is abundantly reciprocated, and the influence for good which such teachers have is beyond measure. They are regarded by these little ones of Christ in their true light, as coadjutors of the pastor, and their admonitions are received with humble and loving obedience. "O ma!" says a little child to its parent on returning from Sunday-school, "we have the nicest teacher in the world, so good, and he knows so much, and he is such a gentleman!" Yes; children are quick of observation—none quicker; and when they have found one who presents all the qualities which should distinguish a worthy teacher, they from that moment begin to count the hours which will intervene until they shall have the happiness of meeting him again. If we aim at having first-class Sunday-schools, which will not only teach the children their catechism, and encourage them in the practice of virtue, but also elevate and refine their manners, and educate them in that, for which, after all, Catholic children are remarkable, namely, Christian politeness, we must secure teachers who, like the teacher of the little child mentioned above, are so good, know so much, and are such gentlemen! We have every confidence that the Sunday-School Union, by its "social" character, will bring this about.

We are making no invidious reflections, and would feel pained to think we should be thus adjudged. We presume to speak from experience. We know something of Sunday-schools, and of their working in small and large parishes, in the city and in the country. We have had to feel the many difficulties which a pastor has to surmount in this matter. We aim at encouraging and bidding God speed to an enterprise which we know is needed, and which we are certain cannot fail of producing incalculable good.

Among other works which the Union proposes, is that of establishing Sunday-schools for colored children. That zealous and apostolic priest, the Rev. Father Duranquet, of the Society of Jesus, did not shrink from adding this to his many other labors when it presented itself to him in the course of his ministry. But just such a power was needed as the Sunday-School Union affords to reach these much-neglected children, and bring them under the influence of the Catholic religion, to care for those of that class who are of her household, to insure a lively, personal, loving interest being taken in them, and thus to show that our holy church is the church of all the people, of white and black, of bond and free. We bless God for this effort of theirs. It is very near and dear to our own heart. The world sneers and scoffs at them, but there is no caste in the Catholic Church, and they are, as well as we, souls for whom Christ died.

The Catholic priest and the Catholic Sunday-school teacher can do more for them, we know, than all the so-called philanthropists from Dan to Beersheba. God forbid that we should turn aside from this labor and leave these precious souls to perish!

The Sunday-School Union is formed exclusively of men. "The female teachers," says the report, "are invited to all the public lectures and discourses, and to participate in as many of the undertakings of the Union as possible." This is all very proper. We know, however, that the ladies have hitherto taken rather the, shall we say, lion's share in the hardest of the undertakings to which the young men of the Sunday-School Union can possibly devote their energies, which is, the work of teaching. In most parishes they have far outnumbered the male teachers. We refrain from making any comparison of their efficiency. For ourselves, we say we do not know how we could possibly have got along without them, nor do we see how their aid can be dispensed with in the future. We are not aware that the Sunday-School Union has any such intention. The ladies do a good by their presence which we of the stronger, rougher sex may not hope to accomplish, besides being the fittest persons to teach the female classes. We are sure that they will cheerfully abide by any rules and regulations laid down by the Union, and do their utmost to carry out any suggestions made to them for the better conducting of their classes. We are not afraid of their resisting the powers that be. But why may they not also meet together for mutual encouragement, instruction, and edification? We shall look for some movement of this kind before long.

As for the Union itself, we look upon it not as a simple local expedient to meet a local want. It has a national interest, and sooner or later must find imitation in all our large cities and towns. We hope soon to hear that such has been the case in many other places, and then the influence of such associations will be increased in the ratio of the union of their separate and distinct bodies, at least, such an union as we trust and pray will soon be exhibited in all great Catholic works in this country—the assembly of their members for mutual acquaintance, cooperation, and debate, in a National Catholic Congress. The good that is done, the power that is elicited from assemblies of this kind, is well known to all our readers who have perused our articles on the Catholic Congress of Malines, in former numbers of The Catholic World. The Sunday-School Union would do well to consider this matter in the light of their own interest. In their union they have found strength. Let them seek to extend their efforts by encouraging, in so far as they are able, any such associations as may be started, or are in operation, in other places, inviting a correspondence and offering all their aid, looking forward, at the same time, to a union with them on a larger and general basis, and to the discussion of their mutual interests in a grand congressional assembly.

We trust that our remarks will be received in the spirit in which they are meant. They have been prompted by the deep, heart-felt interest which we feel in the subject, and the entire sympathy which we have for the noble, holy, Christian work to which our friends have devoted their energies. They have not begun too soon. Every year thousands of our children, in this city of New York alone, leave school to engage in various occupations, where they are thrown into the society of youths of all religions and of no religion. Protestantism has practically no influence over children, and generally leaves them to shift for themselves, and pick up what scraps of religion they may.

Unfortunately, the mass of them, being totally ignorant of the blessings and comfort of the Catholic faith, and not having had any very cheerful experience of religion as it has been presented to them by the bald, repulsive, unchild-like nature of Protestantism, break away from its restraints, and run wildly into the deserts of rationalism or infidelity. Poor children! our hearts bleed for them. But, while we pity them, let us not forget that they are to be the daily associates of our own lambs of the flock. How necessary, then, that we should strive by every effort to prepare ours for the dangers to which they will be exposed by giving them, while we may, a thorough knowledge of their holy faith, and send them forth guarded by a panoply of virtue, accustomed to a regular attendance upon the divine offices of the church, and to a frequent reception of the Holy Sacraments. Let it be our aim to dismiss each and every child from our Sunday-schools a loyal, devout, intelligent Catholic, whose faith is firm as a rock, and whose soul is bright and pure with the indwelling grace of God. Our blessed Lord, the lover of little children, will not fail to remember our care of those of whom He said: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

Sonnet On "Le Recit D'une Soeur,"
By Mrs. Augustus Craven.

Whence is the music? Minstrel see we none;
Yet, soft as waves that, surge succeeding surge,
Roll forward—now subside—anon emerge—
Upheaved in glory o'er a setting sun,
Those beatific harmonies sweep on:
O'er earth they sweep from utmost verge to verge,
Triumphant Hymeneal, Hymn, and Dirge,
Blending in everlasting unison.
Whence is the music? Stranger! These were they
That, great in love, by love unvanquished proved:
These were true lovers, for in God they loved:
With God these spirits rest in endless day.
Yet still, for love's behoof, on wings outspread
Float on o'er earth betwixt the angels and the dead.

Aubrey de Vere.

Nellie Netterville;
or, One Of The Transplanted.

Chapter VI.

The party from the tower came on meantime at a rapid rate; and, peeping cautiously from behind her hiding-place, Nellie saw that they had already reached the foot of the hill where she and her grandfather stood awaiting their approach. The lady—even at that distance Nellie fancied she could see that she was young and pretty, and, though clad in the saddest and strictest of Puritanic attire, anything but a Puritan in her looks and bearing—rode in front, with the military-looking personage, described already, upon one side, and a younger cavalier, with the air likewise of a soldier, on the other, while a couple of followers brought up the rear. At first the three foremost of the party rode abreast, but, as the up-hill path began to narrow, the lady pushed her horse ahead so as to lead the way, and Nellie could hear one of her companions shouting to her to ride cautiously until she had turned the sharp corner of rock behind which Nellie herself was at that moment standing. The warning came, as warnings often do come, too late by a single second. It could have scarcely reached the lady's ears ere she had dashed round the corner, and her horse, wild and unmanageable enough already, plunged violently at the unexpected apparition of Nellie and her grandfather on the other side. If the path had not widened considerably at that spot, the struggle must have ended fatally, and even as it was, Nellie expected every moment to see both horse and rider roll over the edge of the precipice to which the heels of the former were in such fearful proximity.

The lady, however, sat him to perfection, and after a short, sharp struggle for the mastery, she succeeded in forcing him to rush at a wild gallop straight down the path leading to the valley, the only safe course of action she could possibly have adopted.

Her companions had by this time reached the spot where Nellie had watched the contest, and the younger of the two was about to spur his horse on to the rescue, when his older and wiser companion shouted to him to forbear.

"Let her be, Ormiston! Let her be!" he cried. "She knows well enough what she is about, my Ruth. And you will but infuriate her horse by following at his heels."

Thus adjured, the young man, addressed as "Ormiston," had no choice but to remain quiet. He drew in bridle, therefore, beside his chief, and watched as patiently as he could the down-hill gallop of the lady. The result fortunately justified the confidence of the elder horseman. No sooner had she reached the wide bottom of the glen below, than she checked her horse suddenly, and turning him almost before he had time to suspect her intentions, galloped him up the hill again with such right good-will that he was glad enough to stop and breathe of his own accord by the time she had rejoined her companions.

Relieved from all anxiety on her account, the old Cromwellian officer, for such his scarf and embroidered shoulder-belt announced him, turned the vials of his wrath, as even the best men will upon such occasions, upon those who, however unwittingly, had been the cause of the disaster. In the present case Nellie and her grandfather were only too evidently the offenders, and the storm was accordingly sent full upon their heads. They were still standing in the recess formed by the shoulder of the retreating bank, and as Nellie, by an unconscious movement of girlish timidity, had retired behind Lord Netterville, he formed for a moment the chief figure in the group. Thoroughly roused and wakened up at thus finding himself unexpectedly face to face with his arch enemies, the old man stood out upon the foreground like a picture, his eyes sparkling, his white hair falling on his shoulders, and a grave and noble pride in his very attitude which belied alike the meanness of his apparent station and the disfigurement of his stained and travel-worn attire. The latter indeed consisting entirely of the so-called "Irish weeds," the Cromwellian officer naturally enough concluded him to be a native, and addressed him, accordingly, in such terms of contemptuous abuse as it was too often the Saxon fashion of those unhappy times to bestow upon the Celt.

"How now, thou 'Irish dogg'? How hast thou dared, thou and thy wench, to cross our path, and so put the life of the Lord's elect in danger? Give place at once and let us pass, if thou wouldst not that I should do unto thee as I did at Tredagh, where my sword, from the rising even to the setting of the sun, wrought the vengeance of the Lord on an idolatrous and misguided people."

Lord Netterville, during this agreeable harangue, had stepped right into the centre of the path, so that the other could hardly have passed him without a struggle, and he barely awaited its conclusion ere, with eyes flashing fire, he violently retorted:

"'Irish dogg!' sayest thou? Learn, thou unmannerly Saxon churl, that my blood is as English perhaps more so than thine own; and certainly from a nobler fountain! I am of the English pale," he continued, drawing himself up to his full height, and gaining in dignity what he lost in passion, "and one of no mean standing in it either—a Netterville of the old Norman race, since the days of the first Plantagenet."

"Lord Netterville—father!" said the young Amazon in a low voice, pushing her horse forward and touching the officer's shoulder with her riding-whip in order to attract his attention. "It must be the Lord Netterville of whom there was some question, I remember, when you were in negotiation for these lands."

"Ha, wench! thou also to blaspheme!" he cried, turning furiously upon her. "Knowest thou not that there is but one Lord, and that the pride of them that assume his titles stinks in his nostrils like the burning pitch of Tophet? And thou," he added, addressing himself to Lord Netterville, "in vain dost thou boast of thy race or lineage; for whatever they once were, they have, I doubt not, been so often renewed in the blood of the Irish as to have little or naught left of English honesty or honor to bestow upon their owner."

"Little or much!" cried the old lord furiously, "if thou, black dog of Cromwell as thou art, will but dismount and bid one of thy lackeys put a sword into my hands, I will show thee that, in spite of my seventy years and odd, I have still enough of English manhood left to chastise impertinence, wherever or in whomsoever I may chance to find it."

"Sir," cried Nellie, terrified at the turn affairs were taking, and placing herself between the disputants, "there is no need for all these taunting words and bandying of harsh challenges. In peace have we come hither, and we do but seek to possess our own in peace—their honors, the commissioners at Loughrea, having assigned to us our residence amidst these mountains."

"Residence!" cried the officer, roused at once into a far more bitter and personal feeling than the sort of proud contempt, which was all that he had hitherto deigned to bestow upon the strangers. "Residence among these mountains, dost thou say? Nay, then, young maiden, thou hast mistaken thy mark, and that most widely, since all these lands, as far as the eye can see—even this land of Murrisk, which we English call the 'Owles,' with its upper and its lower barony as well—have been made over to me already, as mine own inheritance, the land which the Lord hath given (for the laborer is worthy of his hire) as the fruit of long service in the battle-field."

"This is my grandfather. Lord Netterville, and we are, as he has rightly told you, of the old English of the pale," said Nellie, making one step nearer in order to present her certificate. "At first, in common with the other inhabitants of Meath, we were to have been sent into the more eastern baronies of Connaught; but the numbers set down for transplantation to those parts having been found greater than could be accommodated on the land, we were assigned at last our portion in the same barony of Murrisk."

The officer looked at first as if greatly inclined to refuse the paper which she held up for his acceptance; but suddenly changing his intention, he snatched it rudely from her hand, and ran his eye over the contents.

"Humph! ha!" he continued to mutter as he read; and then turning to Nellie, he said in a voice in which, toned down as it was to an affectation of cold indifference, her quick ear detected, nevertheless, a lurking tone of triumph.

"This certificate bears a date, as I see, of some three months earlier in the year. How, then, is it, maiden, that it was not presented sooner?"

"It is five months to-day since we left our home—our pleasant home in Meath," said Nellie sadly; "and "much of that time was spent perforce at Loughrea. At first we were kept there in sore suspense as to the settlement of our just claim for land, and after that we were detained by sickness. Our servant fell ill and died of the plague; my grandfather suffered also much from the same malady, and he has in some measure recovered from it; it has, alas! reduced him from a hale and hearty old age, to the wreck—mind and body—that you see before you. In this way our scanty stock of money was soon exhausted, and when at last he was fit to travel, we had to sell our horses and the best part of our wearing apparel, in order to satisfy the debts incurred during his illness; after which there was nothing for it but to finish the journey as best we could on foot."

"How marvellous are the mercies of the Lord—the mercies which he has laid up for them that fear him," cried the officer, turning triumphantly toward his companions, and yet shrinking, in spite of himself, beneath the angry glances shot at him from the blue eyes of his daughter. "Surely his hand and his wisdom are visible in this matter," he added, in a less openly exultant manner; "for look ye, maiden, had you and the man you call Lord Netterville come hither at the time when, according to the date of your certificate, you should have done, you might, peradventure, have found no one to dispute possession with ye. But behold! instead of that, the Lord hath vexed and troubled ye; he hath forced ye to tarry, even as he forced his rebellious people to tarry in the wilderness; he hath afflicted ye with sickness; he hath even visited ye with death, in order that I, his servant and soldier on the battle-field, might go up and take peaceable possession of that land which ye vainly fancied to be all your own."

"But are not these the very lands—a portion of the barony of Murrisk—which are set down in our certificate?" said Nellie, not even yet comprehending thoroughly the greatness of the impending blow. "How, then, noble sir, do you speak of them as yours?"

"Yea, and indeed," replied the officer, "these are of a certainty those very lands. Nevertheless, maiden, thou hast yet to learn that, if thou hast a certificate, I also am provided with a debenture, signed and delivered to me two months ago. Consequently, my order on the estate being of a later date, doth override and make void thine own, which, moreover, on looking closer, I do perceive to be merely a de bene esse, a poor make-shift for the time being, until something more permanent could be assigned thee."

"God help us, then!" cried Nellie; utterly overwhelmed by this last announcement. "God help us, then, and pardon those who have trifled so cruelly with our fortunes! Strangers we are, and without a place whereon to lay our heads; what then is to become of us in these deserted mountains?"

"Thou shouldst have looked to all that ere coming hither," he answered harshly; "as matters are at present, I would counsel thee to return to Loughrea at thy quickest speed, and to seek some other grant of land from their honors the commissioners, ere all that which is left in their hands has been absolutely disposed of."

"We cannot," said Nellie in a tone of hopeless sorrow, which, save that of the old fanatic himself, touched the hearts of all who heard her. "Look!" she added, turning, and with a sudden wave of the arm indicating Lord Netterville, who, utterly exhausted by his late excitement, was leaning against the bank in a half state of stupor. "Look at that old man, and tell me how is he to retrace his footsteps? Hope, indeed, aided him on his journey hither, but what hope is left to give him courage to go back?"

"As I have already said, thou shouldst have looked to all that ere undertaking such a journey," he answered shortly, and preparing to ride forward; for he saw that in his daughter's face which made him feel sure that she would not remain much longer silent. "And now get you both hence at once, I counsel ye; for my choler is apt to rise in the presence of the enemies of the Lord, and I may not much longer be able to restrain my hand from striking—"

"Strike, if you will, but hear me!" cried Nellie, springing forward so suddenly that she had caught hold of his bridle-rein ere he was even aware of her intention. "If yonder tower is indeed your home, give him a night's shelter in it—only one night—a single night—that he may rest from his weary travels."

"Nay, by the sword of Gideon, not even for an hour!" he cried furiously. "Let go, maiden, let go! or I will strike thee as if thou wert a mad dog in my path."

But Nellie was by this time driven to desperation, and she would not let go. She clung to the bridle-rein, crying out, "Only one night—one little night. God is my witness that if there was but so much as a peasant's hut within reach, I would die sooner than ask such a favor at your hands."

Nearly as frantic with passion as she was with despair, he forced his horse to rear again and again, in order to compel her to let go; but finding, at last, that he could not shake her off, he raised his riding-whip, and it would have fallen heavily on her shoulders if, by a similar and almost simultaneous movement, Ormiston and his daughter had not hastily interfered.

"Major Hewitson!" cried the former in a warning voice—and, "Father, you shall not! you dare not!" cried the girl, spurring her horse eagerly forward, and utterly regardless of the fact that its heels were actually grazing the edge of the precipice as she tried to wrest his whip from her father's grasp.

All the tenderness of the man's heart was wrapt up in his daughter, and even in the midst of that moment of mad passion he saw her danger, and cried out:

"Have a care, child, have a care! or you and your horse will be over the precipice ere you know what you are doing."

"Throw away your whip then, or I will back him over it with my own hands," she cried passionately; "for I would sooner perish at once than see my own father strike a helpless girl like myself."

"Send the Irish beggar hence at once then, will you?" he answered furiously, flinging away his whip as he spoke, and, tearing his rein by main force from Nellie's grasp, he galloped rapidly down the hill.

Instead of following him, the girl backed her horse further into the recess in order to make room, and then waved her hand with the gesture of an empress to the others to pass on. With the exception of Ormiston they all obeyed, and no sooner had they got to a little distance than she flung herself off her horse, and, tossing the reins to her companion, threw herself into the arms of the astonished Nellie, exclaiming:

"O my God, my God! and these are the deeds that we do in thy name! When wilt thou arise and come to judgment?"

"Nay, grieve not thus, dear lady," said Nellie, generously forgetting her own great wrongs at the sight of such voluntary humiliation. "You at any rate have no cause to grieve, for willingly you have done no wrong."

"Call me not lady; I am but a girl, a woman like yourself; only"—she added with a touch of pride so like humility that it was almost as beautiful—"only, probably, of meaner nature, and certainly of less lofty lineage. What can I do for you? Alas! alas! why do I ask, for what can I do? Shelter, except in my father's house, I have none to offer; and in that, after what he has said just now, I could not even ensure your lives."

Here the young officer, who had by this time dismounted and approached the girl, endeavored to insinuate his purse into her hands; but she shook her head impatiently, and said, "Money! money! of what use can money be in such wilds as these?"

Nevertheless, on second thoughts, she took the purse, and would, perhaps, in a hesitating, shame-faced sort of way, have offered it to Nellie, if the latter had not said decidedly:

"As you say, dear lady, it would be worse than useless. Neither are we beggars. We did but seek what we thought to be our own. And now," she added sadly, "we ask still less—even that which the very beggars are thought to have a right to claim—but a shelter for a single night."

"And even that I cannot give you," said the girl disconsolately; "but at least," she added suddenly, in a brighter tone, "I think I can tell you where to find that." She pointed with her whip to a narrow path branching off a little lower down the hill, and leading apparently in the direction of the sea. "Follow that path—it is neither long nor difficult—and it will lead you to the waters of the creek below. At the very foot of the hill, where the path ends, you will find a hut; if empty, it will at least give you shelter; if otherwise, its owner will, I doubt not, make you welcome. He ought at least," she added quickly, "for he also has lost something. Trust me, you are not the only ones whom we have robbed for the achievement of our own greatness. Farewell! and if ever you pray for your enemies, put us among the worst and foremost."

She turned to her horse as she finished speaking. Her companion would fain have aided her to mount; but putting him pettishly on one side, she leaped into the saddle without assistance, and galloped back by the road which she had come. The officer, thus repulsed, bowed respectfully to Nellie, and then, remounting his own horse, followed in the same direction. She cantered on, however, as if unconscious of his existence, merely urging her horse to a quicker speed, in order to escape him—a manoeuvre which he took care, by imitating, to render useless. Finding, at last, that he would not be shaken off, she pulled up suddenly, and said angrily, and without even deigning to look round:

"Why do you follow me? Why do you dog my footsteps? Ride back to my father, will you? He is of your own creed and calling, and will better appreciate your society that I can."

"Nay, Ruth," he was beginning, but she interrupted him almost fiercely—

"Call me by my own name if you wish that I should answer you. To you at least, and to the world, I will still be Henrietta, though at my father's hands I am compelled to submit to this mummery of a change of name."

"Well, then, Henrietta," he answered quietly, but very gravely, "believe me, I did not mean to anger you. I said 'Ruth,' because that name is so often on your father's lips that it has begun to come almost naturally to mine. I would not willingly anger you at any time, and least of all, just now, when, in spite of what I must call your unkind waywardness toward myself, I love and worship you, as I never did before, for that nobleness of nature which recoils, at any cost, from all that savors of injustice."

"Carry your love and worship elsewhere, then, for I will have none of it," she said, evidently in nowise mollified by his apology. "What should I care for your good opinion? Do you not feel in your heart of hearts, or must I tell you, that we are divided, as far as the north pole from the south, in our most intimate convictions, and that what you and my father call religion I consider as fanaticism—or that something which is worse than fanaticism, or almost than crime—hypocrisy."

"You cannot believe what you are saying," he answered, now indignant in his turn; "you know how well and truly I have loved you, and you cannot believe that I am a hypocrite; you cannot—you could not—you would not so dishonor me in your thoughts—you who have promised to be my wife!"

"I retract that promise, then," she answered passionately, "wholly and entirely I retract it. Never, so help me God, will I become the mother of a race of fanatics, who will find, for such deeds as we have seen done today, their pretext in religion."

"Henrietta!" he cried, the blood rushing to his temples, "you cannot be in earnest!"

"See if I am not!" she answered coldly. "Ride back to my father now, and let me go my ways alone to the tower."

"I will go to him, Henrietta; but it will only be to tell him that I am about to return to my appointment in Dublin—unless, indeed," he added, with a lingering hope of reconciliation—"unless, Henrietta, you retract."

"I never retract," she answered shortly.

"Then, farewell!" he said, with a half movement, as if he would have taken her hand."

"Farewell!" she answered, affecting not to see his offered hand, and shaking the reins loose on her horse's neck.

Ormiston turned his horse's head in the opposite direction, and went forward a few paces; then he stopped and looked after his late companion. She was moving on, but slowly, and like one lost in thought. Stirred by a sudden honest impulse of regret, he turned and followed her. Henrietta heard him, and instantly checked her horse, as if determined not to suffer him to ride any longer at her side.

"Henrietta!" he said.

"What would you?" she asked sullenly.

"Only unsay that one word, 'hypocrisy,' and let things be as they were before."

"I never unsay what I have said," she answered coldly.

"Neither do I," he retorted, now angry in earnest; "and I swear to you that I will see you no more until under your own hand and seal you retract, of your own accord, what you have said to-day, and tell me to return."

"Farewell, then, for ever," she replied, with rather a bad assumption of indifference—"for ever, if so it must be."

"Farewell," he answered, without, however, as even in that moment Henrietta noticed, adding the ominous "for ever." "Farewell, and God forgive you for so trifling with the honest heart that loves you, and has loved you from your childhood. Some day—too late, perhaps—you will do me justice."

And so they parted.

Chapter VII.

Left to herself, Nellie Netterville sat down to collect her scattered senses. The situation in which she found herself needed, in truth, a calm sense and courage, not often the heritage of petted girlhood, in order to bear up successfully against its difficulties. Happily for herself, the brave Irish girl was possessed of both in no common degree, and the trials and troubles of the last few months had ripened these faculties into almost unnatural maturity. The tale she had just told to Major Hewitson was free of the smallest attempt at exaggeration, being, in fact, rather under than over the measure of the truth. Lord Netterville, in common with many another unfortunate gentleman of the English Pale, had been kept dancing attendance on the commissioners at Loughrea until both hope and money failed him. The absence of home comforts told heavily upon a frame already weakened by age and sorrow; and just at the moment when he could least bear up against it, he was attacked by the plague, or some disease analogous to the plague, which at that very time was making most impartial havoc among the native Irish and their foes. Thanks to an iron constitution, he recovered, but he rose from his sickbed, if not absolutely a child in mind, yet as utterly incapable of aiding Nellie by advice, or of steering his own way unassisted through the troubled waters on which his ill fate had cast him, as if he had been in very deed an infant. His servant was already dead, therefore the whole responsibility of their future movements devolved upon his granddaughter. She proved herself, fortunately, not altogether unequal to the occasion, never losing sight for a moment of the purpose which had brought her to Loughrea, and tormenting the commissioners until, less moved by her youth and helplessness than by a desire to rid themselves of her troublesome importunities, they gave her the certificate which she had shown to Major Hewitson, and which, as he had instantly perceived, was rendered worse than useless to its possessor by the fact of its being merely a temporary arrangement. Ignorant alike of Latin and law language, Nellie had, naturally enough, supposed it to be a permanent appointment; and, selling their horses and every article of value in her possession, in order to pay the debts contracted at Loughrea, she had made the rest of the journey on foot, leading, soothing, and encouraging the old man as if he had been a child, and buoying up his courage and her own by fanciful descriptions of that home in the far west, where she trusted his last days might be passed in peace. She had tried to deceive him; she never attempted to deceive herself as to the nature of their future prospects; yet unpleasant as her anticipations had been, they were so much more agreeable than the terrible realities upon which she had just stumbled, that she felt for a few moments, as she sat there alone among the hills, as if the very gates of an earthly Paradise had been closed against her. But it was no moment for the indulgence of such natural regrets. She looked at her grandfather, and felt that his life was in her hands. She remembered, too, her promise to her mother to be son as well as daughter to his age; and sternly and tearlessly, for tears were too weak an expression for such desolation as she was feeling then, she set herself to consider what her next move ought to be. Food and shelter for the old man—(and it needed not another glance at his pale face to tell her how much both were needed) food and shelter—these must be her first object. It would be time enough after they had been secured to decide as to the feasibility of a return journey to Loughrea. She rose, and drawing her hood, which, in her struggle with Major Hewitson, had fallen back upon her shoulders, once more over her head, she took her grandfather by the hand, and led him quietly and silently down the path pointed out to her by Henrietta. It had originally been a sheep-path, and proved far less difficult than she had expected, winding gradually round the hills until it reached a sort of creek or estuary formed by the inrushing, for a couple of miles, of the waters from the bay beyond. It was a lonely, but a lovely spot, and Nellie's heart beat more calmly as she paused to listen to the soft rocking of the waters in their inland bed, and to feel the fresh breeze which they brought from the ocean playing on her heated brow. There were no visible signs near her of that human habitation of which Major Hewitson's daughter had so confidently spoken; but at last, after having searched the landscape steadily in all directions, she thought she saw something like a blue curl of smoke rising out of a sort of mound, which, at first sight, seemed neither more nor less than a cairn of unusually large dimensions, nearly hidden by clumps of gorse and heather at least six feet high, and bushy and luxuriant in proportion. On nearer inspection, however, it proved to be a hut, such a hut as even to this day may be sometimes seen in the wildest parts of the wild west, rounded at the gables, built of rough stones, rudely yet solidly put together, and with a roof laid on of fern and shingle, carefully secured from the violence of the western winds by bands of twisted straw. A hole in this roof stood proxy both for window and for chimney, and the doorway was literally doorless. A sort of grass mat hung across it from the inside, being evidently considered by the inhabitants as ample protection against cold and wet, the only foes which extreme poverty has got to boast of.

For five seconds, at the very least, Nellie stood gazing on this frail barrier with a feeling as if it would require more than human courage to announce her presence to the human beings (she knew not whether they were friends or enemies) who might be stowed away behind it. At last, with a shaking hand, she drew back a small corner of the matting, and, without daring to look in, saluted the possible inmates, as the natives of the country salute each other to this day in Irish, "God save all here!" There was no answer, and, lifting the curtain a little higher, she looked in.

The hut was empty, though a few embers burning on the floor gave sufficient evidence of its having been recently inhabited. Of furniture, save a single wooden settle, Nellie could discover none; but a gun was standing upright against the opposite wall, and near it hung a very Spanish-seeming mantle, looking as much out of place in that miserable abode as its owner would probably have done if he had been there to claim it. The solitude, and the sight of that gun and mantle, made her feel far more nervous than she would have felt if a dozen of the natives of the soil had been congregated within. It seemed to imply some mystery, and, to the helpless, mystery always has a touch of fear about it. Moreover, it made her suddenly conscious that she was an intruder, an idea which would never have come into her head if her possible hosts had been of that frank-hearted race to whom the virtue of hospitality comes so easily that it does not even occur to them to call it "virtue." On the other hand, her grandfather's pale face and sunken features seemed to plead with her against all unseasonable timidity. Hastily, therefore, and as though she were about to commit a theft, she put aside the matting, drew the old man inside, and then replaced the screen as carefully as if she hoped in this manner to hide her audacious proceedings from the owner of the hut—or rather, if the truth must be told, from the owner of the mysterious mantle. This first step fairly taken, Nellie suddenly grew brave, and resolving to make the most of their impromptu habitation, she drew the settle nearer to the fire, and made Lord Netterville sit down upon it.

The sight of the embers seemed to revive the latter, less perhaps from any need he felt of its warmth on that bright sunny day than from the home-like associations which it awakened in his mind. He smiled a wintry smile, with more of old age than of gladness in it, and stretched forth his withered hands to warm them in the blaze. Then, as if suddenly waking up for the first time to a perception of his being foodless, he asked Nellie if supper would soon be ready, for that in truth he was well-nigh starving. Starving he must have been, that poor Nellie knew well enough already; for they had exhausted their scanty stock of food that very day, and he had tasted nothing since the early dawn. She soothed him, however, and besought him to have yet a little patience, and then, with a desperate resolution to appropriate to his use whatever of food the hut might happen to contain, she commenced a careful examination of its hidden nooks. There were, of course, neither shelves nor cupboards, or anything, indeed, which even suggested the idea of provisions having been ever kept there; but at last, when she had almost begun to give up the search in despair, she espied something like the handle of a basket peeping out from beneath a bundle of firewood which lay heaped in one corner of the hut upon the floor. Pouncing upon this at once, she discovered that it contained a couple of sea-trout, upon which the owner of the mansion had probably intended making an early dinner, for they were already prepared for broiling. With renewed energy Nellie took a handful of dried brushwood, and threw it upon the half-extinguished fire, after which she proceeded, in her new character of cook, to lay, in a very leisurely and scientific manner, the fish upon the embers. So engrossed was she in this occupation, that she never perceived that the mat curtain over the doorway had been once more lifted up, and that some one was watching her proceedings from the outside. This some one was a man, apparently about twenty-five or thirty years of age, with a figure rather above than below the middle height, and a face which, full of energy and expression as it was, was by no means regularly handsome, though the large, Murillo-looking eyes by which it was lighted up deceived casual beholders into a conviction that it was.

He was clad in a garb which might have belonged to the native fishermen of the coast, yet no one could have mistaken him for other than a gentleman and soldier, as he stood there, holding back the screen of matting, and gazing, with a look curiously compounded of amusement and annoyance, at the scene presented by the interior of the cottage. The latter feeling, however, was evidently in the ascendant—so much so, indeed, that he had actually made a half-movement, as if to retreat and leave the hut to its uninvited occupants, when something—was it a glimpse of Nellie's delicate profile, as she stooped over the glowing embers?—induced him to change his mind, and stepping quietly over the threshold, he dropped the screen behind him with an energy and good-will which seemed to indicate that, instead of his premeditated flight, he had made up his mind to accept with a good grace, and perhaps even to enjoy, this unexpected addition to his society. The sound of the falling mat warned Nellie of the advent of a stranger, and, crimson with shame and fear, she stood up to receive him. He gazed upon her steadily, the half-feeling of annoyance, still visible on his clouded brow, yielding gradually to a look of intense but reverent admiration, and removing his fisherman's cap from his head, he bowed courteously, and said in English:

"God save all here, and a hundred thousand welcomes also, if, as I apprehend, you are fugitives like myself from tyranny and injustice."

There was an indescribable tact and courtesy in the way in which he combined this announcement of his being the master of the hut with a frank and ready welcome to his unknown visitants, which made Nellie feel at once that she had to do, not only with a man of gentle birth but of high and polished breeding also. Yet this fact seemed for the moment rather to add to her difficulty than to decrease it, and secretly wishing that the fish could be made, by some magical process, to disappear from the embers upon which it was comfortably broiling, she placed herself as much as she could between it and the stranger as she stammered out her apology for intrusion. Did he see the fish? and did he guess at the petty larceny she had just committed? Nellie fancied she saw something like an amused look in his eye, which made her feel hot and cold by turns with the consciousness of discovered guilt, but the rest of his features wore no smile, nothing but an expression of kind and courteous sympathy as he eagerly interrupted her excuses—

"Say no more, dear lady, say no more, trust me I have not now to learn for the first time to what dire straits the sad necessity of these days of woe may bring us. And, therefore, to all who come to this poor hut, but more especially to those who, for honor and for conscience sake, have laid down wealth and power elsewhere, I have but one word—one greeting, and that is the old Irish one, of a hundred thousand welcomes."

"A hundred thousand welcomes!" repeated a feeble, quivering voice close to the stranger's elbow. He turned and looked for the first time steadily at Lord Netterville, of whose presence up to that moment he had been barely conscious. The old man had risen from his seat, and stood smiling and bowing courteously, evidently thinking he was doing the honors of a home, of which—however humble—he was yet the undoubted master.

"Our house is poor, sir," he went on, "once, indeed, we boasted of a better; but let that pass. Such as it is—such as our enemies have made it—you may reckon assuredly upon meeting an Irish welcome in it."

"Sir," whispered Nellie through her tears, fearing lest the stranger might break in too rudely on the old man's delusion. "He is old—he has been ill—he fancies he has reached his home; you must excuse him."

The unknown turned his eyes upon the girl with a look so full of reverent sympathy, that it went straight to her heart, never afterward to be effaced from thence. She felt that her grandfather would be safe in such kindly hands, and was turning quietly away when Lord Netterville, still enacting his fancied character of host, threw a handful of dry wood upon the fire, and the blaze that instantly ensued fell full upon his features, which had hitherto been barely visible in the gloom. The stranger started violently.

"Good God!" he cried, in a tone of irrepressible astonishment. "Is it possible that I see Lord Netterville, and in such a plight?"

"You know my grandfather, then?" cried Nellie joyously, feeling as if the stranger must have been sent by Providence especially to help her in the hour of her utmost need. "You know my grandfather?"

"I ought, at any rate," he answered, with a sad smile, as he took Lord Netterville's proffered hand. "For we fought together and were beaten at Kilrush; my first battle, and, as I suppose, his last."

"Ha!" cried the old man, "Kilrush! Kilrush! who speaks to me of Kilrush? Were you there, sir? Time must have played sad tricks upon my memory then, for, truth to say, I do not recognize you."

"Nay, my good lord," said the stranger soothingly, "it would be stranger still if you had done so, for I was but a beardless boy in those days. Nevertheless, I remember you, Lord Netterville, and surely you cannot have altogether forgotten the cheer we gave when you, a tried and veteran soldier, rode up to serve with us as a volunteer in the regiment of your gallant son."

"I remember! I remember!" cried the old man eagerly. "It was a bright and glorious morning, and we charged them gallantly—a bright and glorious morning, but with a sad and bloody ending. Alas! alas!" he added, his voice falling suddenly from its trumpet-like tone of exultation to an old man's wail of sorrow. "Alas! alas! how many of the best and bravest that we had among us lay dead and trampled in the dust, as we withdrew from that fatal field."

He bowed his head upon his breast, and remained for a little while absorbed in thought, and Nellie took advantage of the pause to say:

"You knew my father, sir? You must have known him if you were near Lord Netterville at Kilrush; for father and son charged side by side, and were seldom, as I have since been told, ten minutes out of each other's sight during the whole of that bloody battle."

"Knew your father? Yes, dear lady—if your father was, as I suppose, Colonel Netterville—I knew him well. He was the bosom friend of my uncle and namesake, Roger Moore of Leix, who placed me in his regiment when I joined the Irish army."

"Roger Moore of Leix," cried Nellie, a flash of enthusiasm lighting up her face; "Roger Moore—the brave—the gifted—the first leader in a noble cause, whose very name was a battle-cry, and whose followers rushed into fight, shouting for 'God—our Lady—and Roger Moore!' Yes, yes; he was my father's friend. I remember even when I was a child how he used to talk about him. And you," she added, with a sudden change of voice and manner, and placing both her hands in his, "you, then, are that Roger Moore, the younger, in whose arms my poor father died."

"At the battle of Benburb," said Moore, in a low voice; "a glorious battle—well fought, and well won, and yet for ever to be regretted, for the loss of one of Ireland's bravest and most faithful soldiers."

"Grandfather," cried Nellie, suddenly withdrawing her hands from Roger, and blushing scarlet at the inadvertence of her own action which had placed them in his, "this is Captain Moore, who bore my wounded father out of the press of battle, and to whom we are indebted for that last and loving farewell which he sent to us in dying."

But instead of replying with an eagerness corresponding to her own, Lord Netterville gazed vacantly upon the stranger, evidently without the slightest recollection of his name or person, and repeated, in a low mechanical voice, his previously-muttered welcome.

"He does not remember!" said Roger. "Alas! alas! for that bright intellect, once cloudless as a summer's noon!"

"Hush, hush!" whispered Nellie. "Recollection is beginning to return." And Lord Netterville did, in fact, seem to be making a languid effort at gathering up his scattered thoughts, for he looked at Roger, and said feebly:

"You knew my son, sir?—you knew my son?—then, indeed, you are very welcome. He was a brave boy, and fought for his king and country—fought and fell—on the field of—the field of—the name—which I thought never to forget—has almost escaped me."

"Benburb," Roger ventured to interpose.

"Benburb! Ay, that was the very name—Benburb!—my memory does not fail me, sir; but I have been much tried of late—or we rode too far this morning—for I feel very faint."

He tried to draw back from the fire as he spoke, but he tottered, and would have fallen if Roger had not caught him by the arm, and made him sit down upon the settle.

"He is faint for want of food," said Nellie hastily; "we have been wandering all day among the hills, and he has not broken his fast since morning."

Roger did not answer, but signing to her to support Lord Netterville, he went straight to some invisible cranny in the walls of the hut, and drew thence a bottle of strong cordial. Pouring a little of this into a broken mug, he made the old man swallow it, and then stood beside him, anxiously watching the result. Happily it was favorable—in a few minutes Lord Netterville revived, the color returned to his wan cheek, and turning to Nellie, he asked her, in a half-whisper, "if supper would soon be ready?" Shyly, and blushing scarlet, Nellie nodded an affirmative, and forgetting all her previous shame in anxiety for her grandfather, she was about to resume her office as cook, when, with a half-smile on his face, Roger Moore put her quietly aside.

"Nay, Mistress Netterville, remember that I am master here, and that I forbid you to lay hands upon that fish? I have always been cook in my own proper person to the establishment, and I cannot allow you to supersede me in the office."

"Forgive me!" said Nellie, tears starting to her eyes, and half fancying in her confusion that he was angry in earnest. "I could not help it, for he was starving."

"Do not misunderstand me, I entreat you," said Roger, in a voice of deep and real feeling; "I should be a brute if I objected to anything you have or could have done; I only meant that I objected to your continuing in that office; for so long as the daughter of my old colonel is under my roof, (even though it be but a poor mud sheeling,) she shall do no work, with my good-will, unfit for the hands of a princess." He busied himself while speaking in drawing forth, from that same recess in which he had found the cordial, some thin oaten cakes, a few wooden platters, and one or two knives and spoons of such massive silver, that Nellie could not help thinking they were as much out of keeping with the rest of the furniture as Roger himself appeared to be with the hut, of which he was doing the honors in such simple and yet such courtly fashion. He would not even let her hold the platter upon which he placed the fish as he took it from the embers, and he himself then brought it to Lord Netterville, and pressed him, as tenderly as if he had been a child, to partake of this impromptu supper.

The old man yielded, nothing loath, and so, indeed, did his grandchild; for, though very fair to look at, no goddess was poor Nellie, but a young and growing girl with the healthy appetite of sixteen. She accepted, therefore, Roger's invitation without the smallest affectation of reluctance, and sitting down on the floor beside her grandfather, shared the contents of his platter with innocent and undisguised enjoyment. With all her sense and courage, she was as yet in many things a perfect child, yielding as easily as a child might do to the first ray of sunshine that brightened on her path, and accepting the happiness of the present moment as unrestrainedly as if never even suspecting the shadows that were lurking in her future. Now, therefore, that she felt her grandfather was in safe and helpful keeping, she threw off the sense of responsibility which had weighed her down for months, and became almost gay. Color rose to her wasted cheek, light sparkled in her eyes, and she responded to Roger's efforts to make her feel comfortable and at home, with such innocent and unbounded faith in his wish and power to befriend them, that he vowed an inward vow never to forsake her, but to guard her, as if she had been in very deed his sister, through the trials and dangers of her unprotected exile. When their meal was over, and while her grandfather slumbered in the quiet warmth of the peat-fire, she told Roger Moore her story, simply and briefly as she might have told it to a brother, beginning at her departure from her ancestral home, and ending with her encounter with the English strangers among the mountains.

"It is Major Hewitson," said Roger, "in whose favor I have been despoiled of my old home. Major Hewitson and his pretty daughter 'Ruth,' as he chooses to call her, in order to blot out the fact that her name is Henrietta, and that she had a popish queen for her godmother. She forgets it not herself, however," he added, with a smile; "for her mother was of noble race, and they say that she is a true cavalier at heart, and pines like a caged bird in the network of demure fanaticism which her father has twined around her."

"She has a lovely face and a kind and honest heart, for certain," said Nellie. "She knows you also, now I think of it; for she it was who directed me to this hut, with a hint that I should here find a friend."

"Did she?" said Roger, with genuine fervour. "Nay, then, for that one good deed I needs must pardon her, that she, or her father for her, have robbed me of my inheritance. And now I think of it," he added, with a touch of sly malice in his smile, "you also, if you came hither to seek land, must have been bound on the same errand; for both these baronies, 'Umhall uaghtragh' and 'Umhall ioghtragh,' is the country of the O'Mailly's, and, in right of my grandmother, my own."

Nellie blushed scarlet. "Alas!" she said, "I knew not whither or to whom they sent us; but sure am I, at all events, that we never would have accepted of any home at the expense of its rightful owners."

"Nay," said Roger, "I did but jest. Would indeed that it was to you I had been compelled to yield it! In spite of that fact you should have had, I promise you, a right royal welcome. And now I must needs explain. This sheeling, you must know, is not really my home. It is but a temporary refuge, of which I have two or three along the coast; for I have fought battles enough against England's new-fangled government to have deserved the honors of outlawry at her hands. My life consequently has been none too safe at any time these six months past, and now that yonder gray-haired fanatic, who would ask nothing better than to seal his title in my blood, has got possession of these lands, it is of course less secure than ever. My most permanent home, however, is on an island, facing the bay on this side, and washed by the waters of the Atlantic on the other. It is poor enough, God knows, yet capable of giving better accommodation than such a hut as this is. Will you and your grandfather be content to share it with me?"

Tears rushed into the dark eyes of Nellie.

"Providence is good," she answered simply—"Providence is very good, and gives us friends when we least expect them."

"Well, then, it is a bargain," cried Roger gayly; "and now. Mistress Netterville, come and see the craft in which you will have to make the voyage."

He pulled down the "mysterious mantle" as he spoke, and Nellie saw that, instead of covering the bare wall as she had imagined, it merely concealed an opening into an inner and smaller portion of the hut, built right over the creek, and made to answer the purpose of a boat-house. Into this the water rushed, so as to form a basin deep enough for the floating of a boat, and one accordingly lay safe within it, concealed by the overhanging roof from observation on the outside.

It was not flat-bottomed like the native craft, but had been evidently built both for strength and speed by one who understood his business, and its chief cargo at this particular moment seemed to be a quantity of luxuriant heather.

To this Roger pointed with a smile. "If I were a Highlander," he said, "you might suspect me of second-sight; for I have gathered, without thinking of it, double the usual quantity of heather, that which we outlaws perforce use for bedding. I hope you will not mind roughing it a little."

"I have roughed it a good deal within the last few months," said Nellie, "and I do not think you will find me difficult to please. Is the boat quite safe? I have never been out on the real sea before."

"Safe!" said the young man, with a little pardonable pride in his dark eyes. "I built her myself, and she has weathered more than one bad storm since the first day that I sailed her. I call her the 'Grana Uaille,' after the stout old chieftainess whose island kingdom I inhabit, and which, with the other lands of which Major Hewitson has robbed me, I inherit from my grandmother. But the sun is getting low. Do you not think we had better start at once, and get the voyage over before night-fall?"

To this Nellie gladly assented, and between them they conducted Lord Netterville to the boat. Roger arranged the heather so as to form a sort of couch, and, with the mantle thrown over him to protect him from the damp, the old man found himself so comfortable that he settled himself quietly for slumber. Then Roger put up his sail, and with a fresh and favorable wind they glided down the creek.

Nellie would not lie down, but she sat back in the boat with a lazy kind of gladness in her heart, which, rightly interpreted, would probably have been found to mean perfect rest of body and mind. Such rest as she had not felt for months! The waters widened as they approached the bay, and Nellie marked each new feature in the scene with an interest all the keener and more enjoyable, that everything she saw was so unlike anything she had ever seen before. Accustomed as she had been to the tamer cultivation of her native country, the savage grandeur of that wild west, with its poverty in human life, its wealth in that which was merely animal, took her completely by surprise, and she gazed with unwearied interest, now on the undulating ranges of blue mountains which crossed and recrossed each other like network against the sky, then on the broad, black tracts of peat and bog land which covered the country at their feet like a pall; listened now to the bittern and plover as they answered each other from the marshes, then to the shrill screams of the curlews as they rose before the boat, darkening the air with their uncounted numbers; or she watched a heron sweeping slowly homeward from its distant fishing-ground—or a grand old eagle soaring solemnly upward, as if bent on a visit to the departing sun; and her delight and astonishment at last reached their climax in the apparition of a seal, which, just as they cleared the creek, popped its head up above the waves, leaving her, in spite of Roger's laughing assurances to the contrary, well-nigh persuaded that she had seen a mermaid. The wind continuing steady, Roger shook out his last remaining reef, and, responding gayly to the fresh impulse, the boat sprang forward at a racing pace. They were in Clew Bay at last, and Nellie uttered a cry of joy—never had she seen anything so beautiful before. Masses of clouds, with tints just caught from the presence of the sun, soft greens and lilacs, and pale primrose and delicate pearly white, so clear and filmy that the evening star could be seen glancing through them, hung right overhead, shedding a thousand hues, each more beautiful than the other, upon the bay beneath, until it flowed like a liquid opal round its multitude of tribute isles. Opposite, right in the very mouth of the harbor, stood Clare Island, all alight and glowing, as if it were in very deed the pavilion of the setting sun, which, as it sank into the waves beyond it, wrapped tower, and church, and slanting cliff, and winding shoreline, in such a glory of gold and purple as made the old kingdom of Grana Uaille look for the moment like a palace of the fairies. Nellie was still straining her eyes for a glimpse of the Atlantic on the other side, when the deep baying of a hound came like sad, sweet music over the waters, and Roger slightly touched her shoulder. They were close to the island; in another moment he had run his boat cleverly into the little harbor and laid her alongside the pier. A huge wolf-dog, of the old Irish breed, instantly bounded in, nearly oversetting Nellie in his eagerness to greet his master.

Roger laid one restraining hand on the dog's massive head, and removing his cap with the other, said, smiling courteously:

"You must not be afraid of Maida, Mistress Netterville, she is as gentle as she is strong, and has only come to add her voice to her master's, and to bid you welcome to the outlaw's home."

Chapter VIII.

Nellie slept that night the peaceful slumbers of a child; but the habits of long weeks of care were not to be so easily shaken off, and the first ray of sunshine that found its way through the narrow window of her chamber roused her from her well-earned repose. Her first impulse was, as it had ever been of late, to spring from her couch with a painful sense of hard duty to be accomplished that very day; her next was to thank God with all the fervor of a young and innocent heart for the haven of safety into which he had guided her at last. Then she lay back upon her pillow, and, yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was now no immediate call upon her for exertion either of body or mind, glanced languidly round the dimly-lighted room, and endeavored to make a mental inventory of its contents. It was a square chamber, forming the second story of the old tower in which Roger had taken up his abode, and which was all that was yet remaining of the old stronghold of Grana Uaille. The apartment had evidently no furniture of its own to boast of, but, having been used as a sort of lumber-room, was abundantly supplied with articles brought hither from more favored mansions. Nellie soon perceived that much of this so-called lumber was of the costliest description, and represented probably the sum total of all that had been saved from the wreck of Roger's fortune. There were cabinets of curious workmanship, a table carved in oak as black as ebony, a few high-backed chairs of the same material, ornaments in gold and silver, some of ancient Celtic manufacture, others in their more delicate workmanship bearing marks of artistic handling, which, even to Nellie's unaccustomed eye, betrayed their foreign origin. There were pictures, too, most of them with the dark shadow of a Spanish hand upon them, and swords, bucklers, weapons, and armor of all kinds, old and new, defensive and offensive, piled up here and there in picturesque confusion in the corners of the turret. Nellie had been amusing herself for some minutes scanning all these treasures over and over, and guessing at their various uses, when her attention became suddenly riveted upon a huge coffer with bands and mouldings of curiously-wrought brass, which stood against the wall exactly opposite to the foot of her bed. She was still quite girl enough to be willing to amuse herself by imagining all sorts of impossibilities respecting the contents of this mysterious looking piece of furniture, and she was watching it as anxiously as if she half expected it to open of itself, when the door of the chamber was cautiously unclosed, and the old woman, who represented the office of cook, valet, and everything else in Roger's establishment, crept up to her bedside as quietly as if she fancied her to be sleeping still.

"God's blessing and the light of heaven be on your sweet smiling face," she ejaculated, as Nellie turned her bright, wide-open eyes with a grateful smile upon the old hag. "Lie still a bit, a-lannah, lie still, and take a sup of this fresh goat's whey that I have been making for you. It will bring the color, may be, into your pretty cheeks again; for troth, a-lannah, they are as pale this morning as mountain roses, and not at all what they should be in regard to a young and well-grown slip of a lassie like yourself."

Nellie took the tempting beverage, which Nora presented to her in an old-fashioned silver goblet, readily enough; but checking herself just as she was about to put it to her lips, she said, gayly:

"Thanks, a thousand times, my dear old woman, but I do not feel that I need it much, and this whey would be the very thing for my poor old grandfather. He was always accustomed to something of the sort in the days when we were able to indulge ourselves in such luxuries."

"Lord bless the child!" said the delighted Nora. "If she isn't as gay as a bird in its mother's nest this morning, for all the weary worry of her last night's travels. But there's no need to be sparing of the whey, my honey, for sure I've a good sup of it left on purpose for the old lord as soon as ever he awakens. So drink up every drop of this, if you wouldn't have the master scold me; for he sent it up himself, he did, and it's downright mad he'd be if it came back to him and it not empty."

Something in this speech, or in old Nora's way of making it, caused the blood, the absence of which she had been just deploring, to rush once more into Nellie's cheek; and perhaps it was partly to hide this weakness that she took the goblet without another word, and drained it to the dregs, playfully turning its wrong side up as she gave it back to Nora, in order to show her how thoroughly her directions had been complied with. Made happy on this important point, the old woman trotted gayly out of the room, and then Nellie rose, half-reluctantly, it must be confessed, and commenced the duties of the toilet. They were simple enough in her case, yet difficult, also, from their very simplicity. Her hair, long and smooth and shining, was easily enough disposed in braids, which, folded tightly round her head, gave a grace and elegance to her appearance none of the fantastic head-gear then in vogue could possibly have imparted; but when she came to inspect the habiliments she had worn the day before, and which perforce she must wear again that day, she became painfully, and, perhaps for the first time, fully conscious of the dilapidations which time and travel had wrought upon them. In vain she rubbed out mud and grass stains, in vain she plied her needle. The garments absolutely defied her skill, and, painfully conscious of the fact, she was about perforce to don them as they were, when Nora burst into the room with a look of gladness on her face, which vanished, however, to do her justice, as completely as if it had never been, at the sight of poor Nellie, shame-faced and sad, vainly trying to smooth her rags into something like decent poverty around her.

"God help you, a-cushla!" she cried in a tone of unfeigned compassion, laying at the same time her withered hand upon the tattered kerchief which Nellie was trying to fold round her stately shoulders. "God help ye! and is this all that them black scum of Saxon robbers left ye when they turned ye out upon the wide world to seek your fortune?"

"It cannot be helped," said Nellie with a little choking in her voice, though she tried hard to veil it beneath an assumption of indifference. "And after all, these rags do but make me seem what in fact I am—a beggar. Only I hope," she added, with a little nervous laugh, "I hope that Colonel O'More" (she had learned his military rank and his real name, Moore being only its Saxon rendering, the night before from Nora) "will not be utterly disgusted this morning when he finds out to what a pauper he extended his hospitality last night."

"The colonel? Is it the master that you mean? The master be disgusted! Ah! now, listen to me, asthore, and don't be filling your head with them ugly fancies; for you may just take my word for it, and don't I know every turn of his mind as well as if I was inside of it? You may just take old Nora's word for it, that he worships the very ground you tread on, and would, too, all the same, if you had never a brogue to the foot or a kirtle to the back. Beggar, indeed! Why, could not he see for himself last night that you had been just robbed and murdered like out of your own by them thieving Saxons, and wasn't it for that very reason that, before he went off to his fishing this blessed morning, he gave me the key of that big black box, and says—says he, 'Nora, my old woman, I have been thinking that the young lady up-stairs has been so long on the road that may be she'll be in want of a new dress like; so, as there is nothing like decent woman-tailoring to be found in the island, maybe she'll condescend to see if there's anything in my poor mother's box that would suit her for the present.' And troth, my darling," old Nora went on, "it's you that are going to have the pick and choice of fine things; for she was a grand Spanish lady, she was, and always went about among us dressed like a princess."

Nora had opened the box at the beginning of this speech, and with every fresh word she uttered, she flung out such treasures of finery on the floor as fully justified her panegyric on the deceased lady's wardrobe.

Nellie soon found herself the centre of a heap of thick silks and shiny satins, and three-piled velvets and brocaded stuffs, standing upright by virtue of their own rich material, and of laces so delicate and fine, that they looked as if she had only to breathe upon them in order to make them float away upon the air like cobwebs.

She was quite too much of a girl as yet to be able to resist a close and curious examination of such treasures; nevertheless, her instinct of the fitness of things was stronger than her vanity, and there was an incongruity between these courtly habiliments and her broken fortunes, which made her feel that it would be an absolute impossibility to wear them. Selecting, therefore, a few articles of linen clothing, she told old Nora that everything else was far too fine for daily wear, and began, of her own accord, to restore them to their coffer. Not so, however, the good old Nora. That any thing could be too fine for the adornment of any one whom "the master" delighted to honor, was a simple absurdity in her mind; and she became so clamorous in her remonstrances, that Nellie was fain to shift her ground, and to explain that she was bent at that moment upon "taking a long ramble by the sea-shore, for which anything like a dress of silk or satin (Nora's own good sense must tell her) would be, to say the least of it, exceedingly inappropriate."

At these words a new light seemed to dawn upon the old woman's mind, and, plunging almost bodily down into the deep coffer in her eagerness to gratify her protégé, she exclaimed, "So it's for a walk you'd be going this morning, is it? and after all your bother last night! Well, well, you are young still, and would rather, I daresay, be skipping about like a young kid among the rocks than sitting up in silks and satins as grave and stately as if you were a princess in earnest. Something plain and strong? That's what you'll be wanting, isn't it, a-lannah? Wait a bit, will you? for I mind me now of a dress the old mistress had made when she was young, for a frolic, like, that she might go with me unnoticed to a 'pattern.' And may I never sin if I haven't got it," she cried, diving down once more into the coffer, and bringing up from its shining chaos a dress which, consisting as it did simply of a madder-colored petticoat and short over-skirt of russet brown, was not by any means very dissimilar to the habitual costume of a peasant girl of the west at the present hour. Nora was right. It was, as ladies have it, "the very thing!" Stout enough and plain enough to meet all Nellie's ideas of propriety, and yet presenting a sharp contrast of coloring which (forgive her, my reader, she was only sixteen) she was by no means sorry to reflect would be exceedingly becoming to her clear, pale complexion, and the blue-black tresses of her hair. It was with a little blush of pleasure, therefore, that she took it from the old woman's hand, exclaiming, "Oh! thank you, dear Nora. It is exactly what I was wishing for—so strong and pretty. It will make me feel just as I want to feel, like a good strong peasant girl, able and willing to work for her living; and, to say the truth, moreover," she added, somewhat confidentially, "I should not at all have liked making my appearance in those fine Spanish garments. I should have been so much afraid of the O'More taking me for his mother."

The annunciation of this grave anxiety set off old Nora in a fit of laughing, under cover of which Nellie contrived to complete her toilette. Madder-dyed petticoat, and, russet skirt, and long dark mantle, she donned them all; but the effect, though exceedingly pretty, was by no means exactly what she had expected; for Nora, turning her round and round for closer inspection, declared, with many an Irish expletive, which we willingly spare our readers, "That dress herself how she might, no one could ever mistake her for anything but what she really was, namely, a born lady, and perhaps even, moreover, a princess in disguise." With a smile and a courtesy Nellie accepted of the compliment, and then tripped down the winding staircase of her turret, took one peep at Lord Netterville as he lay in the room below, in the "calliogh" or nook by the hearth, which, screened off by a bent matting, had been allotted to him as the warmest and most comfortable accommodation the tower afforded, and having satisfied herself that he was still fast asleep, stepped out gayly into the open air. She was met at the door by "Maida," who nearly knocked her down in her boisterous delight at beholding her again, and she was playfully defending herself from the too rapturous advances of her four-footed friend when Roger ran his fishing-boat alongside the pier, and, evidently mistaking Nellie for some bare-footed visitor of Nora's, called out in Irish:

"Hilloa, ma colleen dhas! run back to the tower, will you, and tell Nora to fetch me down a basket, and you shall have a good handful of fish for your pains, for I have caught enough to garrison the island for a week."

Guessing his mistake and enchanted at the success of her masquerade, Nellie instantly darted into the kitchen, seized a fishing-creel which was lying near the hearth, and rushed down to the pier. Roger was still so busy disentangling the fish from the net in which he had caught them, that he never even looked at Nellie until he turned round to place them in her basket. Then for the first time he saw who it was whom he had been so unceremoniously ordering about upon his commission. Had Nellie been rich and prosperous, he would probably have laughed and made exceedingly light of the matter; but poor, and almost dependent on his bounty as she was, he flushed scarlet to the forehead, and apologized with an eager deference, which was not only very touching in itself, but very characteristic of the sensitive and generous-hearted race from which he sprung. "But, after all," he added, in conclusion, smiling and laying his finger lightly on the folds of Nellie's mantle, "after all, how could I dream that, her weeks of weary wandering only just concluded, Mistress Netterville would have been up again with the sun, looking as fresh and bright as the morning dew, and masquerading like a peasant girl?"

"But I am not masquerading at all," said Nellie, laughing, and yet evidently quite in earnest. "I am as poor as a peasant girl, and mean to dress like one, ay, and to work like one too, so long as I needs must be dependent upon others."

"Not if I am still to be master here," said Roger, very decidedly, taking the fishing-creel out of her hands. "Like a wandering princess you have come to me; and like a wandering princess I intend that you shall be treated, so long as you condescend to honor me by your presence in this kingdom of barren rocks."

"But the fish," said the laughing and blushing Nellie; "in the meantime, what is to be done with the fish? Nora will be in pain about it; for she told me last night that there wasn't a blessed fish in the bay that would be worth a 'thraneen' if only half-an-hour were suffered to elapse between their exit from the ocean and their introduction to her kitchen."

"Nora is quite right," said Roger, responding freely to the young girl's merry laugh; "and it has cost me both time and pains, I do assure you, to impress that fact upon her mind. But Maida has already told her all about it; and here she comes," he added, as he caught a glimpse of the old woman descending leisurely toward the pier. "So now we may leave the fish with a safe conscience to her tender mercies, and, if you are inclined for a stroll, I will take you up to yonder rocky platform, from whence you will see the Atlantic, as unfortunately we but seldom see it on this wild coast, in all the calm glories of a summer day."

To Be Continued.

Mexico, By Baron Humboldt [Footnote 57]

[Footnote 57: Essai politique sur le Royaume de Nouvelle-Espagne. 2 vols. fol. Chez F. Schoell. Paris.]

Some old books, like some old married couples, deserve a second celebration. Fifty years are surely long enough to wait for a rehearsal of nuptials; and a married pair who can for a half-century live at peace with themselves and the public, respected and esteemed, receive a merited recognition and a pleasing recompense. Books that have circulated with an equal longevity and enjoyed universal appreciation, have also their rights for a share of the cakes and ale. If the old people have only a new coat and a new gown, they look young again; if the old favorite volumes are honored with a fresh binding, their backbones seems strengthened. It is charming to witness an ancient dame clinging to the side of her equally ancient husband for time almost out of mind; and it has a home look to find two venerable tomes, called Volume One and Volume Two, supporting and comforting each other on the same shelf in the library. When one of the aged who have trudged on through life together drops off, how soon the second follows after; and when one book is lost or destroyed, its companion pines away in dust, if not in ashes, till, finally neglected, it mysteriously disappears.

But Baron Humboldt's two folios on New Spain or Mexico indicate that time, as yet, has written no wrinkles on their brow. They are good for another lease of life of equal length; their high state of preservation has imparted a healthy appearance; and perhaps grandchildren hereafter will be delighted to make their acquaintance. On the present occasion, the compliments of the season, and of the editor, must be extended to them. And in the interchange of courtesies, let us hear what they have to say for themselves. It is somewhat surprising in modern times that Humboldt's folios on Mexico should have retained so long their pre-eminence. The baron wrote upon subjects wherein our knowledge is continually increasing, where important changes are daily made by new discoveries, and where a constant demand is kept up for new books. His great essay is devoted to branches of political and social sciences, which in their nature are progressive sciences,—geography, topography, economical and commercial statistics. But in the case of the baron, an exception is found in the general law in relation to the rise, reign, and fall of standard authorities. His supremacy in the department of Mexico was established in the first decade of the present age; it may not be destroyed in the last. Yet one fact is truly remarkable: his essay was published in 1811 in Paris, in the most imposing and expensive form, in two volumes in folio; it had been anxiously expected; it was instantly translated into all the modern languages of Europe; it was received with eulogiums and commendations; but no second edition was ever called for. This singular fate of a performance so much extolled, and still quoted, needs some explanation; and in giving this, the interest manifested abroad in the situation of Mexico must also be explained; for in truth, the popularity of the essay was, for the most part, due to the importance of and attention bestowed upon that rich province of the king of Spain on the western shores of the Atlantic. Mexico had been a resplendent gem in the Spanish crown from the time of the conquest by Cortez in 1521; it had been the envy of rival nations, and often the prize which they desired to win from its rightful sovereign. England was eager to supply its market with African slaves, in order to gain access to its ports, and thereby stimulate the contraband trade. France was perpetually on guard at the Bahamas to capture its bullion fleets, bearing their precious cargoes from Vera Cruz to Cadiz. The Dutch defeated the best of Spanish admirals, and carried off the richest spoils; while all three, English, French, and Dutch cruisers, partly privateers, partly public armed vessels with their piratical captains and crews, in times of profound peace made private war on every ship sailing under the flag of Castile. The capital of that far-off country was described in the last century as one of the wonders of the modern world. We read in Spence's Anecdotes, that a travelled gentlemen who had seen several of the most splendid courts abroad, stated in the presence of Mr. Pope, the poet, that he had never been struck so much with anything as by the magnificence of the City of Mexico, with its seven hundred equipages and harness of solid silver, and ladies walking on the paseo waited upon by their black slaves, to hold up the trains, and shade with umbrellas their fair mistresses from the sun. But this New Spain had nothing attractive beyond its wealth; it had no arts, sciences, or history; no literature, poetry, or romance. With the death of Hernando Cortez, these had died out. No one desired more on these subjects. But everybody wished to learn all that could be learned of its prolific revenues, and of its enormous resources in the precious metals, then supplying the commerce of all nations with coin. Nothing was talked of, listened to, or considered, when discussing the condition of that country, except its vast production of silver. "Thank you," said Tom Hood, when dining with a London Amphictyon, who was helping his plate too profusely, "thank you, alderman; but if it is all the same to you, I will take the balance in money." Interest in Mexico was taken in nothing else.

It must be remembered that credit in commerce is of recent origin, and paper currency of still more recent creation. Both, comparatively speaking, were in their infancy at the close of the last century. Precious metals were then the sole, or at least the great, medium of commercial exchanges; and consequently, silver and gold performed a more important part in the markets than they do now. They were more highly appreciated and sought after. Then it was, that the Mexican mines yielded the far greater portion of the total product; and, of course, the control of these mines was supposed to afford the control of the commerce of the world. Economists and statesmen, therefore, turned their gaze upon that strange land beyond sea, as the only land in that direction worthy of their notice. But the notice bestowed upon it was absorbing. Napoleon, availing himself of the imbecility of the king of Spain, and of the venality of the Prince of Peace, endeavored to divert the Mexican revenues from the royal House of Trado at Seville to the imperial treasury of France. Ouvrard, also, the most daring speculator in the most gigantic schemes under Napoleon, the contractor-general for the armies and navy of the French empire, undertook, on his own responsibility, to enter into a private partnership with the Spanish sovereign to monopolize the trade of Mexico, and divide equally the profits. Napoleon assented to this arrangement; English bankers took part in the negotiation; and the British government under William Pitt gave it their sanction and aid. Yet, strange to relate, all this transpired while England was at war with France and Spain, and a British fleet blockaded the harbor of Vera Cruz. These hostile nations were drained of money, and wanted an immediate supply. France had anticipated the public revenues to meet the imperial necessity; the Bank of England had stopped specie payments; Madrid was threatened with a famine from a series of failures in the crops at home, and no funds were in the royal coffers to purchase wheat abroad. Thus all were clamorous for coin, which Mexico only could produce. It was known that fifty millions of silver dollars were on deposit in the Consulado of Vera Cruz, awaiting shipment to Spain; and it was well known, also, that, if shipped, the greater portion of the amount would soon find its way to Paris and London. In this state of affairs, the emergency became so pressing upon the belligerents, that their war policy was compelled to succumb; the blockade was raised and the bullion exported. We shall not soon forget how a similar exigency in the late war compelled the Lincoln administration to permit provisions being furnished to the Confederates, in order to procure cotton to strengthen our finances. Cotton was king of commerce in 1864, Silver was king in 1804.

England, at the same time, was meditating seriously upon the resources and riches of New Spain. Aware of the importance attached by the British cabinet to the subject, Dumouriez, the distinguished French republican exile, then in London, addressed Mr. Windham, the Secretary of War and for the Colonies, a paper advocating its conquest. The general called attention to the fact that, once in English occupancy, "the commerce of the two seas will be in your hands; the metallic riches of Spanish America will pour into England; you will deprive Spain and Bonaparte of them; and this monetary revolution will change the political face of Europe." It seems Mr. Windham entertained the project, and referred it to Sir Arthur Wellesley. In the sixth volume of the Wellington Supplementary Dispatches, the proposition is examined.

While such was the state of public opinion in Europe, finding expression daily in high quarters, and of which the above are only isolated examples, Humboldt undertook his scientific expedition to Spanish America, and was preparing his great essay on New Spain. He landed in Mexico in March, 1803, and remained in the country for one year, engaged in the study of the physical structure and political condition of the vast realm, and in the investigation of the causes having the greatest influence on the progress of its population and native industry. But no printed work could be found to aid him in his researches with materials, and therefore he resorted to manuscripts in great numbers, already in general circulation. He had also free, uninterrupted access to official records; records which for the first time were permitted to be examined by a private gentleman. Finally, he embodied his topographical, geographical, statistical, and other collections, into a separate work on New Spain, "hoping they would be received with interest at a time when the new continent, more than ever, attracts the attention of Europeans." The original sketch was drawn up in Spanish for circulation, and from the comments thereon, he informs us, he "was enabled to make many important corrections." The Essay reviews the extent and physical aspect of the country; the influence of the inequalities of surface on the climate, on agriculture, commerce, and defence of the coasts; the population, and its divisions into castes; the census and area of the intendencias—calculated from the maps drawn up by him from his astronomical observations; its agriculture and mines, commerce and manufactures; the revenues and military defences. But Humboldt very candidly confesses, as incident to such an undertaking, that, "notwithstanding the extreme care which I have bestowed in verifying results, no doubt many serious errors have been committed." It can be readily imagined what attention was given in Europe to the first rude sketch of statistics published by him in 1804-5, The cupidity and ambition of merchants, statesmen, and military men were aroused by this first authentic revelation of Mexican revenues and resources. All nations were anxious to learn more; all classes of people listened in wonder to this true account respecting the prodigious production of the precious metals. In this pleasing excitement, Humboldt was preparing his complete Essay, to satisfy the public desire. Having learned caution from the inaccuracies pointed out in his first rough publication, he was in no great haste to send forth the final result of his labors. Thus, he waited for four or five years; and, unfortunately for his own profit, he waited too long. The interest in Mexico had gone by; the golden visions of its boundless opulence had vanished; its fascinations, that had charmed for years, like some castle raised by magic in a night, resplendent with gems of ruby, amethyst, and jasper, had passed away; the spell of enchantment was broken. For the rebellion burst out in 1810, and commerce, revenues, industry, all perished in the general ruin it created. It was now, in common estimation, one of the poorest colonies of Spain; and what cared the public for more Spanish poverty beyond the Atlantic, when too much of it already was visible in the peninsula? The great Essay, therefore, when finally published, was not purchased with impatient eagerness; it fell flat on the market. For Mexico was now ruined, the public thought; and so does the public continue to think, even unto the present day. Thenceforth, Mexican antiquities only were attractive. The Edinburgh Review, in 1811, writing on the essay, commences: "Since the appearance of our former article on this valuable and instructive work, a great and, for the present at least, lamentable revolution has taken place in the countries it describes. Colonies which were at that time the abode of peace and industry have now become the seat of violence and desolation. A civil war, attended with various success, but everywhere marked with cruelty and desolation, has divided the colonists, and armed them for their mutual destruction. Blood has been shed profusely in the field and unmercifully on the scaffold. Flourishing countries, that were advancing rapidly in wealth and civilization, have suffered alike from the assertors of their liberties and from the enemies of their independence." The Quarterly Review did not notice the Essay, making no sign of its existence.

It is true, some learned gentlemen gave a look into the work, and scientific men studied it well. But the learned and scientific were only a small, select number in the general mass of readers; and Humboldt had not designed his information for, and waited not the approbation of, the select alone, but of all classes alike that could read. Europe closed the map of Mexico when the revolution broke forth, and shut out all further inquiry into its political and industrial condition. Then it was that, instead of a cordial greeting with open arms at every fire side, which Humboldt reasonably anticipated for his production, the door was almost rudely slammed in his face. He never forgot that treatment of the book; he never wrote more upon Mexico; never furnished to the learned or unlearned a new edition, with emendations and corrections, notes and new maps. As it went from the hands of the author then, we receive it now.

At the moment, however, when Europe closed the map, America for the first time seriously opened it; and just in proportion with receding time, as Mexico has faded into insignificance from European view, in the same proportion with advancing time has Mexico loomed up into importance with us. They refused to Humboldt then the high consideration his Essay merited; we bestow upon him now more respect and veneration than his Essay deserves. To the European mind, Humboldt's New Spain was Mexico no more; to the American, Mexico is the same New Spain—changed, to be sure, but still the land for enterprise and riches. It was not altogether unknown to us before our revolution. It had a consideration while the States were English colonies; for Northern merchants sometimes smuggled into its ports, and sometimes, too, our fillibusters buccaneered on its coasts, like other loyal English subjects sailing under "the brave old English flag." When our revolution came, aid was invoked from Spain as well as from France; for the Spanish sovereign had a personal insult to avenge on the British, and Spanish supremacy on the seas to maintain. But Spain, though willing, had, first of all, to concentrate her fleets. One armada was contending with the Portuguese in South America; another was acting as convoy for the galleons, with cargoes of silver, proceeding from Mexico to Spain. Treaties with Portugal were hastily patched up, and "the ordinanza of free trade" liberated the convoy from protecting the ships laden with the silver. The policy of that ordinance Humboldt, and many respectable Mexican writers after him, have much misunderstood; and they are greatly mistaken in their estimate of its beneficial effects on mining prosperity. After the United States became an independent nation, Spain, in order to be rid of the Louisiana incumbrance, which was dependent upon the revenues of Mexico for support, transferred that territory to France; and Napoleon, in turn, sold it to the American government. But did its boundaries extend to the Sabine or the Rio Grande, on the south? And did they extend to the Russian Pacific possessions on the north? These were uncertain questions, and hence from this purchase originated those many diplomatic complications, and no less numerous domestic controversies, which have been the fruitful source of change in cabinets and of defeats of national parties, with the downfall of not a few distinguished men. Hence, also, the first settlements in Texas; next the American colonists, and the question of annexation; the war with Mexico; the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the acquisition of California. Before these measures were decided, however, Colonel Burr had already, with his band of adventurers, undertaken that mysterious enterprise in the same direction, whose object seems to have been as vague as the boundaries to be invaded were uncertain. Ouvrard, also, had solicited and effected the co-operation of leading merchants in Northern cities, in his joint speculation with the king of Spain, for the vast Mexican commercial scheme. And herein was given the great impulse to amassing those large private fortunes, by Mr. Gray of Boston, Mr. Oliver of Baltimore, Mr. Girard of Philadelphia, and the Parish family. Subsequently came the Mexican revolution, protracted for twelve years, during which period the commerce of that country, previously a Spanish monopoly, was completely under the control of Americans. At the close of the Napoleon wars Spain desired the monopoly restored, in order to transfer it to France. This movement called forth, in favor of free commerce, the celebrated message announcing the Monroe doctrine. The message gave umbrage to Russia in reference to her American possessions, and fixed their ultimate destiny. It also forced England to disclose her claim for the first time, and to exhibit her title to the Vancouver country south of the Russian—a title until then unheard of and unknown to American statesmen. The Missouri Compromise grew out of the acquisition of Louisiana, and its repeal grew out of the acquisition of California. As a supplement to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, was concluded the treaty for the Messilla Valley, which negotiation sprung from a mistake in Humboldt's maps, faithfully copied by Disturnell, in giving a wrong location, in longitude and latitude, to El Paso on the Rio Grande. The invasion of Mexico by France in 1862, nearly kindled a desolating war between the United States and the French empire. Unforeseen obstacles, however, induced Louis Napoleon to pause in the conquest; for he had, in its inception, been deceived respecting the condition of Mexico and the Mexican people, and misled as to the easy development by France of the abundant resources of the country. The moral support, moreover, extended to the liberal party by the American government compelled the French to abandon an expedition which was properly appreciated in all its imposing magnitude by the emperor, but which so many to this day do not comprehend.

No one can fail to be astonished in contemplating the large space occupied by Mexico in American affairs; the immense acquisition of territory made from within her ancient landmarks; the princely private fortunes accumulated from her commerce; the vast treasures discovered in her former mines; the rich agricultural crops gathered from her Louisiana valley, her Texas loamy soil, and her California plains; while, upon the margin of the Mississippi river, a city, created by Mexican aid and contributions, has grown into an opulent mart of commerce, surpassing all other American cities in the value of its exports, in the happy era of our greatest prosperity. Nor can that prosperity ever return until New Orleans once more becomes the leading emporium for the outlet of the great staples of this republic. It is no less surprising to recall the fate of so many statesmen, and others of mark, who have risen to distinction, or who have been forced to retire, from questions growing out of their policy toward Mexico. It is no longer disputed that the first fatal error of the first Napoleon was his invasion of Spain, thereby to control the Mexican revenues; perhaps it will soon be conceded that the first fatal error of Louis Napoleon was, in too closely following in the footsteps, in the same direction, of his illustrious uncle. Colonel Burr, the Vice-President of the United States, from his ill-starred adventure, fell into disgrace and sunk into an infamous notoriety. General Wilkinson, once upon the military staff of Washington, was both the accomplice and ruin of Burr, and died in obscurity in a voluntary exile. The Missouri Compromise destroyed the aspirations of many Northern statesmen who opposed its adoption, and shattered the popularity of others who afterward advocated its repeal. The question of annexing Texas was the fatal rock upon which were wrecked the hopes of President Van Buren for renomination; it defeated Mr. Clay; it elected Mr. Polk. In succession to the presidency, were elected General Taylor and General Pierce, from their distinguished positions in the war with Mexico. To the like cause, Colonel Frémont was indebted for his popular nomination, nearly crowned with success. Winfield Scott was made a Brevet Lieutenant-General for his meritorious services in the Mexican campaign, and many of the greatest generals in the recent strife, both Federal and Confederate, received their first practical lessons in the art of war on the same distant field. To all of these historical celebrities, the crude statistics or the elaborate Essay of Humboldt were well known; for Humboldt's publications were the only source of authentic information on Mexico of much value. Other foreign authors, who followed after, copied extensively from him, and native writers have not failed to quote from the same source. But although foreign authors have drawn more from the Essay, they have been less circumspect in verifying the accuracy of its statements; while the Mexican writers, availing themselves sparingly of extracts, sometimes, at least, favor the public with interesting corrections. Travellers too often have given us too much of Humboldt. Indeed, it may be said, they have fed upon him; they have imbibed him with their pulque, and taken him solid with their toasted tortilla. His Essay has been pulled apart leaf by leaf, to be reprinted page after page in their, for the most part, ephemeral productions. Humboldt in pieces has been dished up to suit all customers. An oyster could not be served in more varieties of style. Even foreign embassies have supplied some of these literary cooks. None of them seemed to know that man, even in Mexico, must have more than Humboldt. In a fervid imagination, they thought he could be improved upon, by reducing the Essay to sublimated extracts. But Doctor Samuel Johnson hinted, long ago, that extracts from a work are as silly specimens of its author as was that by the foolish old Greek, who exhibited a brick from his house as a specimen of its architecture. Mr. Prescott, on the contrary, in his celebrated history of the Conquest, with his usual discriminating judgment, has properly availed himself of the Essay to afford his readers a vivid and veracious picture of the natural configuration of the country. And to understand the country properly, this is the primary lesson to be attentively studied. But it is much to be regretted that Mr. Duport, in his standard French work on the production of its precious metals, was misled by errors existing in the maps accompanying the Essay. In consequence, he has made serious mistakes in describing its geological structure, in the run and inclinations of the strata in the silver rock, in the silver-bearing region.

Whoever desires to comprehend the political condition and the industrial or commercial resources of Mexico, ought to commence as Humboldt commenced. It is only through a strict investigation of its material interests that Mexico can be understood. To begin with an examination of its political history is to begin where the labor should end. Mexico, for three hundred years, was a colony, and, like other colonies, had no history, no policy of its own; no armies, no navies, no wars; nothing of statesmanship peculiar to itself; for all were absorbed in the history of the mother country. When emerging from a colonial chrysalis, it did not become a nation; it may be somewhat doubted if it has even yet reached that position. As a republic, its federal government has been without a policy, its administrations without stability, its finances without an exchequer; its armies unable to conquer abroad, or contend with foreign invaders at home; it has no navy; it is almost destitute of all the essential elements that constitute a people. True, Mexico has had great vicissitudes of fortune, with changes, frequent changes, and for the most part violent overthrows, of the federal rulers. But these convulsions have produced no serious results. The storms passed over without indications of wide-spread disaster. Sunshine came again without any visible improvement; no signs of increasing intelligence, no symptoms of decay to the superficial observer; for these petty conflicts originated in personal motives, and so ended. Having no political object, they are devoid of grave consideration, of any interest or profit. Their civil wars have been of regular periodical return, but these wars are of no more historical significance than the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy. Mexico, for many reasons, must still be contemplated, while a sovereign nation, as she was viewed when a viceroyalty of Spain. The country now appears in Christendom as an enigma full of strange anomalies. In the erroneous estimation of most men, it is hastening on to ruin and decay: calamities that came upon the people in their revolt from Spain, and which will cling to them until their race is extinct. The royal finger of scorn, too, is pointed at the republic, as a reproach and warning to all republican governments of their ultimate failure. It would be vain to waste time on its political records, to elucidate Mexican questions. These annals are dumb. But to the mountains, the mines, the mills, where the rich minerals are produced and industry is developed, the inquirer must go to find out what Mexico really is. In observing the people in their private pursuits, he will imperceptibly be led to comprehend their political institutions. In daily contact with the distinct classes, divided into castes, he will in like manner be soon conversant with the most noted men. Enigmas will vanish upon nearer approach and on closer inspection; anomalies will no longer embarrass. Perhaps previously formed opinions may be shocked, rudely assailed, and demolished. He may see many lingering remnants of Astec superstition in one caste, where they often disobey the priest; and much affectation of infidelity in another, where they kneel as suppliants at the confessional to crave a blessing. He will perceive marks of seeming decay everywhere, amid indications of progress. The federal government will be pronounced not only bad, but bad as government in a republic can be; yet will he find some consolation in knowing that the viceregal government was far worse. In the dregs of a popular polity, some protection for the people will be manifest, which was denied under a king. He will hear Spain, on all sides, spoken of with reverence and respect; he will soon understand, on all sides, that Spaniards are detested. He will be gratified with the cordial welcome bestowed upon Americans; and wonder at the common hatred, in all classes, to the United States. While he is aware that millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars, from outlying provinces torn from the nation, have been yielded to their neighbor on the north, he will also discover that the heart of the Mexican territory has not been reached. Nor need he be surprised when the truth is revealed, that the Liberal executive will sooner forget the hostile invasion by France, than forgive the moral support extended to the native cause by that American neighbor.

On the whole, he may conclude that the Mexicans, after all, are somewhat rational and sensible, not entirely deficient in refinement and intelligence, or in energy and industry. But these opinions can only be formed by pursuing the method of Humboldt, and bearing his elaborate production in mind. By constant comparison of his statements with more recent publications from the Mexican press on the same subjects, not only greater accuracy in details will be reached, along with later information, but the advancement in knowledge and wealth will be made apparent. It is thus a just estimate of Mexico at present with Mexico of the past can be formed; and while many imperfections in the parts of the Essay will be detected, no one can fail to admire and appreciate its general excellence.

One Fold.

"And there shall be one fold."

Disciple.

"One Fold! Good Lord, how poor thou art,
To have but one for all!
Methinks the rich with shame will smart
To stand in common stall
With ragged boors and work-grimed men;
And ladies fair, with those who when
They pray have dirty, hands.
Dost think the wise can be devout
When, close beside, an ignorant lout
With mouth wide-gaping stands?

I would thou wert a richer Lord,
And could an hundred folds afford
Where each might find his place.
Look round, good Lord, and thou wilt see
Most men the same have thought with me,
And herd with whom they best agree
In fashion, creed, and race."

Master.

"Good child, thou hast a merry thought!
But folds like mine cannot be bought,
Nor made at fancy's will.
If any find my fold too small
'Tis they who like no fold at all,
The same who heed no shepherd's call,
Whom wolves will find and kill.
My fold alone is close and warm,
Shielding its inmates from all harm—
Its pastures rich and sweet.
Hither, with gentle hand, I bring
The peasant and the crownèd king
Together at my feet.
Here no man flings a look of scorn
At him who may be baser born,
For all as brothers meet.
The wise speak kindly to the rude;
The lord would not his slave exclude;
Proud dames their servants greet.
My fold doth equally embrace
The men of every clime and race,
And here in peace they rest.
Here each forgets his rank and state.
And only he is high and great
Who loveth me the best.
The rich, the poor, the bond, the free,
The men of high and low degree,
My fold unites in one with me—
With me, the Shepherd, called The Good,
Who rules a loving brotherhood.
Therefore, in that my fold is one,
Believe me, it is wisely done."

Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.

Science And Faith.

Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion,
By M. Guizot.

Some time ago political life seemed to be the prominent occupation in France. M. Guizot was then cautiously defending his opinions, and was really wearing out his energy and his life in this work. At that time, we have heard it wished more than once, not that the struggle should cease, but that death might not surprise him with his mind occupied solely with these passing events. He needed, as a last favor and at the end of an ambitious career, some years of quiet and retreat to meditate upon the future, and to revive the faith of youth by the lessons of riper years. He required this for himself, for the interest of his soul. Nothing then foretold that he would soon be engaged in the arena of metaphysical and religious controversy. The disputes about these questions seemed almost lulled to sleep. Not that doubt and incredulity had surrendered their arms; they followed their accustomed work, but without noise, without parade, and without apparent success. This was a truce which had allowed Christian convictions to become reanimated, to increase, and to gain ground. The proof of this was seen in those gloomy days, when the waves of popular opinion, which threatened to destroy, bent, completely subdued and submissive and with an unlooked-for respect, before sacred truths and the ministers of religion. This was the natural result of that bitter struggle which had lasted for fifteen years. The aggressors could not undertake two sieges at one time, and so political power became the target against which all their efforts were directed.

It is not the same now. Power is protected by an armor which has disheartened its adversaries; and the more surely it is guarded, the more exposed and compromised are other questions, which equal or even exceed it in importance. The spirit of audacity and aggression compensates itself for the forced forbearance from politics, imposed upon it by the political power. It sees that in religious matters the ground is not so well protected; it feels more at ease there and not nearly so hard pushed. From this fact there arises a series of bold attacks of a new order, which scandalize the believing, and astonish the most indifferent, when they think for a moment of the preceding calm. It is no longer men or ministers, it is not a form of government, it is God himself whom they attack? We do not ask that the government should place the least restriction on the rights of free thought, even should it be to the advantage of the truths that we venerate the most. We desire to state the fact, and nothing more. It may be that these attacks are not important enough to cause as much anxiety as they have done. They are passionate, numerous, and skilfully arranged; but they cannot shake the edifice, and will serve rather to strengthen it, by summoning to its aid defenders who are more enlightened, and protectors who are more vigilant. Still, they are a great source of trouble. The restlessness, the distress, and the vague fears that the agitation of political affairs seemed alone capable of producing, now arise in the heart of the domestic circle and in the depths of the individual soul from these new discussions. It is not personal interests that are now risked, but souls that are in danger; and if the crisis is apparently less violent and intense, it is really graver and more menacing, and no one can remain neutral in the struggle.

And so M. Guizot wishes to take a part, and has entered the fray. He is of the number who, at certain times and upon certain subjects, do not know how to be silent. In politics he held back and he forbore. He saw the events, but he did not say what he thought of them. His debt in politics is now amply paid; all the more since he owed it to himself, as well as to his cause, to reestablish the real sense, the true physiognomy of the things he did. He had to explain clearly his views, his intentions, his acts; to interpret them and to comment upon them, we can almost say, to finish them during his own life; to give the true key to his future historians; in a word, to write his own memoirs. This was his duty, and he has acted rightly in not delaying it. It was not less for other ends, and in the design of a greater work, that he wished for twenty years' solitude and repose at the end of his life. His desire was heard. The days of calm and retreat have come, not, perhaps, at the time that he desired, and still less under conditions that he would have chosen, but for his glory they are such that he can well think them fruitful, worthy, valuable, full of vigor and of ardor. Happy autumn! when the recollections of the world and the echoes of political strife are only the recreation of a soul incessantly engaged with more serious problems. It is in these heights, in these serene regions, while he is questioning himself on his destiny and on his faith, that war has come to seek him; not the personal war of former times, but another kind of war, less direct and more general, yet perhaps more provoking. He is not the man to refuse the contest. Under the weight of years that he bears so well, stronger, more resolute, younger than ever, he has entered the arena; he will be militant until the end.

What will he do? What is his plan? What position will he take? The volume which is before us is an answer to these questions. It is only a first volume; but it is complete in itself, it is a work that one cannot study too closely, nor diffuse too widely. The developments, the additions, and the supplements which the three remaining volumes will soon add to the work, will, without doubt, make it still more comprehensive and solid; but as it is now, we consider it, without any commentary whatsoever, to be a most effective reply to the attacks which have recently been levelled against Christian doctrines, or, to speak more correctly, against the essence of all religion.

Before entering into the work, let us say something of the manner in which it is written. We are not going to speak of the author's style. We would announce nothing new to the world by saying that M. Guizot, when he has time and really tries, can write as well as he speaks. His pen for many years has followed a law of progress and of increasing excellence. He has shown in these Meditations a new skill, perhaps higher than in his Memoirs even, in the art of clothing his ideas in excellent language; learnedly put together, yet without effort or stiffness, true in its coloring, sober in its effects, always clear and never trivial, always firm and often forcible. Something more novel and more characteristic appears in this book. It is in reality a controversial work, but a controversy which is absolutely new. It is more than courteous, it is an impersonal polemic. The author has, certainly, always shown himself respectful to his opponents; he has ever admitted that they could hold different opinions from his in good faith; and even at the rostrum, in the heat of contests, his adversaries were not persons, they were ideas; but the people he disputed with were always, without scruple, called by their names. Here it is different; there is not a single proper name, the war is anonymous. In changing the atmosphere—in passing, if we can be allowed the expression, from earth to heaven, or, at least, from the bar to the pulpit, from politics to the gospel, he changes his method and takes a long step in advance. He endeavors to leave persons entirely out of consideration, for they only embarrass and embitter the questions. He forgets, or at least he does not tell us, who his adversaries are; he refutes them, but he does not name them.

Is not this discretion at once, good manners and good taste? It is also something more. Without doubt, by speaking only of ideas and not of those who maintain them, one loses a great means of effective action. In abstract matters, proper names referred to here and there are a very powerful resource—they arouse and excite attention, they give interest and life to the argument; but what is gained on one hand is frequently lost on another. The use of proper names, though it may have nothing to provoke irritation, still always incurs the danger of causing the debate to degenerate into a personal dispute. The questions are reduced to the capacity of those who sustain them. Better take a plainer and more decided path, and keep persons completely out of view. M. Guizot has done well. In no part of his book is there reason to regret the vivacity and attraction of a more direct polemic; whilst the urbanity and the omission of names, without really changing or diminishing the questions, spread a calm gravity throughout the work, almost a perfume of tolerance, which gains the reader's confidence and disposes him to allow himself to be convinced. It is true that this kind of polemics can only be maintained when greatness of thought compensates for the lack of passion. It is necessary to take wing, mount above questions, conquer all and enlighten all. Such is the character of these Meditations. The comprehensiveness of his views, the greatness of his plan, and the clearness of his style, alike impress upon it the seal of true originality.

It is not a theology that M. Guizot has undertaken; he has not written for doctors; he discusses neither texts nor points of doctrine; he does not attempt to solve scholastic difficulties; still less does he wish to mingle in the discussion of incidental events, to descend to the questions of to-day, and to follow, step by step, the crisis which agitates the Christian world at this time. He has grappled with more weighty and more permanent questions. He wishes to show clearly the truth of Christianity in its essence, in its fundamental dogmas, or rather in its simplicity and innate greatness, without commentary, interpretation, or human work of any kind, and consequently before all disunion, schism, or heresy. He has tried to expose the pure idea of Christianity, so that he can be more able to demonstrate its divine character.

Such is his intention. What has he done to attain it? The book itself must answer this question. But in these few pages how can we speak of it? How can we analyze a work when one is tempted to quote every paragraph? And on the other hand to give many extracts from a book, is only to mutilate it and give an incorrect idea of its real value. Let us only try, then, to say enough to inspire our readers with the more profitable desire of studying M. Guizot himself.

I.

The beginning and the foundation of these Meditations is a well-known truth, which the author establishes with absolute certainty, and which at this time it is useful to keep in mind. This truth is, that the human race, since its first existence and in every place where it has existed, has been engaged in trying to solve certain questions which are, so to speak, personal to it. These are questions, of destiny, of life rather than science, questions it has invincibly tried to determine. For example, Why is man in this world, and why the world itself? Why does it exist? Whence do they come, and where do they both tend? Who has made them? Have they an intelligent and free Creator? or are they merely a product of blind elements? If they are created, if we have a Father, why, in giving us life, has he made it so bitter and painful? Why is there sin? Why suffering and death? Is not the hope of a better life only the illusion of the unhappy; and prayer, that cry of the soul in anguish, is it only a sterile noise, a word thrown to the mocking wind?

These questions, together with others which develop and complete them, have excited the deepest interest of the human race since it first existed upon the earth, and it alone is interested in them. They speak only to it; among all living creatures, it alone can comprehend and is affected by them. This painful yet grand privilege is the indisputable evidence of its terrestrial royalty; it is at once its glory and its torment.

This series of questions, or rather mysteries, M. Guizot places at the beginning of his Meditations, under the title of Natural Problems. Man, indeed, possesses them by his very nature; he does not create or invent them, he merely submits to them. We do not mean by this that for humanity in general these problems are not obscure and confused, without a distinct form or outline, surrounded with uncertainties and frequently rather seen than clearly apprehended. This must be true of the great mass of mankind, who live from hand to mouth, who go and come and work, absorbed in petty pleasures or occupied with dreary toil. Still we think that there is not a single one, even among these apparently dull and heedless men, in whatever way he may have lived and whatever hardships he has had to sustain, who has not at least once in his life caught a glimpse of these formidable questions and felt an ardent wish to see them solved. Make as many distinctions as you please between races, sexes, ages, and degrees of civilization; divide the globe and its inhabitants by zones or climates; you will no doubt discover more than one difference in the way in which these problems are presented to the soul; you will find them more or less prominent, and more or less attention paid to them; but you will find a trace of them everywhere and among all people. It is a law of instinct, a general law for all times and places.

If such is our lot, if these questions necessarily weigh upon minds, these questions which are "the burden of the soul," as M. Guizot calls them, are we not really compelled to try to solve them? It is on our part neither vain curiosity, nor capricious desire, nor frivolous habit which leads us to attempt it. It is a necessity, quite as serious and as natural to us as the problems are themselves; a need we feel in some way to have lifted from us the weight which oppresses. We must have a reply at any cost; who can give it to us?

Faith or Reason? Religion or Philosophy? At every moment we see in what a very limited manner reason, science, and all purely human resources suffice to satisfy us. It can be said that, from the very infancy of human society up to the present day, it has been from the various religions, thought to be divine and accepted as such by faith, that humanity has asked these indispensable responses.

We readily see from this, what a deep interest is attached to these natural problems. Who will presume to tell us that religion proceeds from an artificial and temporary want, which men have gradually overcome, if the problems to which it answers are inherent in the race and can only perish with it? It is the constant work and watchword of every materialistic and pantheistic system to distort the character of these problems and make them simply accidental and individual, the result of temperament or of circumstances. Farther than this, they had not yet gone. They did not dare to deny, in the face of universal testimony, the continued existence of the problems themselves. They disguised their significance, they did not aspire to destroy them. Now they take another step. In order to get the advantage in answering, they begin by suppressing the questions. This is the characteristic feature, the first step of a system which makes a great deal of noise in the world to-day, although it only claims to reproduce efforts which have been already more than once defeated. It has, however, this kind of novelty, this advantage over its associates which, like it, have issued from pantheism, that it is not vague. It sets forth its opinions clearly and without equivocation, and by this fact this school of philosophy has gained the title by which it is commonly known. We need hardly say that it is to Positivism that we are alluding. This promises with the greatest seriousness, if we will only lend it our attention, to free humanity from these untoward problems which now torment it.

Its remedy is extremely simple: it simply says to the human race, Why do you seek to know whence you have come and what is your destiny? You will never find out a word of this. Do then your real duty. Leave these vain fancies. Live, become learned, study the evolution of things, that is to say, secondary causes and their relations; on this subject science has wonders to reveal to you; but final causes and first causes, our origin and our destiny, the beginning and the end of the world, these are all pure reveries, words completely without meaning! The perfection of man as well as of society consists in taking no notice of these things. The mind becomes more enlightened, the more it leaves in obscurity your pretended natural problems. These problems are really a disease, and the way to cure it is, not to think of them at all.

Not to think of them! Ingenuous proposition! Wonderful ignorance of the eternal laws of human nature! "Our age," say they, "inclines to these ideas: but let us not be disturbed by this." Men will not be persuaded by speaking to them in such a clear way, any more than Don Juan could overcome Sganarelle by his discourses on "two and two are four." Positivism not only attempts the impossible, but it frankly acknowledges it. Let us suppose for a moment that by some miracle it should triumph; that man, in order to please this system, should cease to pay any attention to the problems which beset him, should renounce the idea of fathoming these questions, and should despise every attempt at a religious or even a metaphysical solution, every inspiration toward the Infinite. How long does any one believe this would continue? We do not think that the human mind would consent to be thus mutilated and imprisoned for two days in succession. Were this system far more fascinating, the human soul would still rise above the limit to which Positivism would confine it, and would say with a great poet:

"Je ne puis, l'infini malgré moi me tourmente."

And so we see, whatever may happen, Positivism is not destined to give us the solution of these natural problems. After, as before, its appearance, the mystery of our destiny claims the attention of the human race.

M. Guizot describes another attempt, of an entirely different character. It is apparently less bold, for its aim is not to suppress inquiry, but merely to elude any definite solution of these natural problems. It cannot be properly called a system; it is rather a state of the individual soul, which not unfrequently is found among cultivated minds; it is a tendency to substitute what is called religious sentiment for religion itself. They do not deny the great mysteries of life, but consider them as being very serious and extremely embarrassing. But in the place of precise solutions and categorical replies, which could be required of a system maintaining fixed and clearly defined dogmas, they content themselves with frequent reveries and long contemplations. "This is," say they, "the religion of enlightened intellects; we care for no solutions, for they only serve to agitate and annoy." It offers a complete contrast to Positivism. That recommends us, as a sort of moral hygiene, never to think of invisible things; but these "enlightened minds" would have us reflect much, if not continually, upon them, but always with the proviso that we must come to no conclusion.

The human race will not be satisfied with these modes of interpreting its destiny. It requires something more than the blind negations of the one, or the vague aspirations of the other. Man is not merely an intellectual or an emotional being; he is both united. He requires real answers, and not beautiful dreams; he requires true replies, which satisfy his intellect as well as his heart, which point out the way he must take, which sustain his courage, which animate his hope and excite his love. The ideal that he seeks is a system of facts, of precepts, and of dogmas, which will correspond to the wants that he finds within himself. Let us search for it, for it is the great question for us all. As we have already said, there are two sources from which we may hope to learn the truth, one entirely human, the other half divine. Does the first suffice? Let us see.

II.

If science can reply to the appeals of our souls, if by its own power and light it can reveal to us the end of this life, can make us see clearly the beginning and the end, so much the better; we will cling to science without asking for anything more. We have this exact and sure guide completely within our control; why should we seek adventitious aid and inexplicable revelations? It is true that everybody cannot be learned, but everybody believes in science. However scanty her proof may be, the most rebellious yield as soon as she has pronounced her decision. There is no schism or heresy with her. If sometimes the savans quarrel, which they can do perhaps even better than other men, they are not long in finding a peacemaker: they take a retort, a microscope, or a pair of scales; they weigh, compare, measure, and analyze, and the process is terminated: until new facts are ascertained, the decree is sovereign. What an admirable perspective opens before humanity if these hidden questions, which now puzzle and confuse, will in the future be cleared up and accurately determined by the aid of science. Time and the law of progress give us an easy way of putting an end to our perplexities. The fruit of divine knowledge, the old forbidden fruit, we can now pluck without fear, and we can satiate ourselves without danger of a fall!

Unfortunately, all this is only a dream. In the first place, the authority of science is not always admitted. It has more or less weight, according to the subject it may treat. In the investigations of natural things, in physics, and in mathematics, its decisions are law. But when it leaves the visible world, when it turns to the soul, interminable controversies arise. Its right to be called science is then disputed; for it appears to be only conjectural, and half the time its principal efforts consist in trying to demonstrate that it has the right to be believed. This is exactly the kind of science with which we have to do. The questions which disturb man are not the problems of algebra or chemistry; they are the secrets of the invisible world. We cannot expect unanswerable solutions of these doubts, for science, in the field of metaphysics, has none such to give us.

Can science gratify its fancy in these investigations with perfect liberty and without limit? No, an impassable barrier opposes and imprisons it in the invisible universe, as well as in the breast of physical and material nature. All science, whatever it may be, has its determined limit in the extent of finite things. Within this limit, everything is in its power; beyond it, everything escapes it. Could it possibly be otherwise? It is the product of our mind, which is finite; how then could human science be anything but the explication of the finite? Induction, it is true, transports us to the extreme frontier of this material world, to the door of the infinite, and the results of induction are with reason called scientific; yet what does this wonderful faculty, this great light of science, really do? Nothing else than to put us face to face with the unknown mysteries which are completely closed to us. It shows them in perspective, it makes us see enough to persuade us that they really do exist, but not enough to make known any truth precisely, exactly, practically, or experimentally—in a word, scientifically. The invisible finite, that is to say; the human soul, the dwelling of the human Ego, science is capable of explaining; the invisible infinite, the supreme, creative spirit, escapes it completely.

But this is exactly what must be penetrated and thoroughly known, if we expect to resolve the great problems which concern our destiny in a scientific manner. It is then impossible, it is more than an illusion—it is folly to hope for a solution of these questions from human science.

Is this equivalent to saying that philosophy is powerless to speak to us about natural problems? that it has nothing to say to us about our duties, our hopes, our destiny? No, certainly not. It is qualified, it has the right to treat of these questions; to treat concerning them, not to resolve them. The most daring effort of spiritual philosophy can never span the abyss; it can only make the borders more distinct. Noble task, after all! A sound philosophy, which abstains from useless hypotheses, which gives us that which it can give, namely, the clear proof that an invisible order does exist, that realities are behind these mysterious problems, that they justly disturb us, that we are right in wishing to solve them; all this, certainly, is not worthless knowledge nor a trifling success for the human race. As soon as this philosophy flourishes in a place, if it be only among a small number of generous spirits, the perfume is spread abroad, and, little by little, one after another, the whole people feel its influence, and society is reanimated, elevated, and purified. And religion, we do not fear to say it frankly, is badly advised and wants prudence, no less than justice, when, in the place of accepting the aid of this system and welcoming it as a natural auxiliary, seeing in it a kind of vanguard, which is to prepare minds and overcome prejudices, she keeps it at a distance almost with jealousy, combats it, provokes it, places it between two fires, and loads it with the same blame and bitter reproaches as the blindest errors and the most perverse doctrines receive. If these unfortunate attacks had not been made, perhaps we should not see certain reprisals, an excess of confidence, and a forgetfulness of its proper limits that its friends do not now always avoid; for if it is true that we should be just toward it, it is no less true that it should be held in check. M. Guizot, as a real friend, has frankly rendered it this service. Perhaps no one before him has traced with so sure a hand the limits of philosophical science. He claims for it the sincerest respect, and ably sustains its legitimate authority, but clearly points out the limit that must not be passed.

More than one, its adherents will complain: "You discourage us. If you wish us to maintain the invisible truths against so many adversaries, do not deprive us of our weapons; do not tell us in advance how far we may go; let us trust that some day this gate of the infinite, at which we have struggled for so many centuries, will at last be opened."

We could answer: "If you had only made some progress during these centuries, we could hope for more in the future. We would not have the right to say, 'So far shall you go, but no farther.' But where are the advances of metaphysics? Who has seen them? Possibly there has been a progress in appearance, that there is now more clearness and more method. In this sense, the great minds of modern times have added something to the legacy of the philosophers of ancient history; but the inheritance has ever remained the same. Who will presume to boast that he knows more of the infinite than did Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato? The natural sciences seem destined to increase. Feeble at first, they gradually go from victory to victory, until they have created an empire, which is constantly increasing and always more indisputable. Metaphysical science, on the contrary, is great at its birth, but soon becomes stationary; it is evidently unable ever to reach the end it is ever seeking. If anything is needed to prove this immobility of metaphysics, it will be done by referring to the constant reappearance of four or five great systems, which in a measure contain all the thousand systems that the human mind has ever, or will ever invent. From the very beginning of philosophy, you see them; at every great epoch, they are born again; always the same under apparent diversities, always incomplete and partial, half true and half false. What do these repeated returns to the same attempts, ending in the same result, teach us, unless the eternal inability to make a single advance? Evidently man has received from above, once for all and from the earliest times, the little that he knows of metaphysics; and human work, human science, can add nothing to it."

If, then, you rely on science to pierce the mystery of these natural problems, your hope is in vain. You see what they can attain—nothing but vague notions, fortified, it is true, by the firm conviction that these problems are not illusory, that they rest upon a solid foundation, on serious realities.

Is this enough? Does this kind of satisfaction suffice for your soul? What does it signify if a few minds, moulded by philosophy, comprehending everything in a superficial manner, remain in these preliminaries, contented with this half-light, and need no other help to go through life, even in times of the most severe trial? We are willing to grant what they affirm of themselves, but what can be concluded from this? How many minds of this character can be found? It is the rarest exception. The immense majority of men, the human race, could not live under such a system; it is too great a stranger to the philosophical spirit; it has too limited a perception of the invisible. All abstraction is Hebrew for it. And even supposing that the vague responses that come from science were to be presented in a more accessible form; still the essential facts would be for most men without value or efficacy, and a most inadequate help.

What is the human race going to do if, on one side, it cannot do without precise responses and dogmatic notions concerning the invisible infinite, and if, on the other, science is the only means of attaining this end? If it aspires to learn truths which transcend experience, and yet takes experience for its only guide? If, in short, it will only admit and accept the facts that it observes, confirms, and verifies itself? How shall we escape from this inextricable difficulty?

To Be Continued.

Cowper, Keble, Wordsworth; Or,
"Quietist" Poetry, And Its Influence On Society.

The Spanish priest, Michael Molinos, who spent the last eleven years of his life in the prisons of the Inquisition, was destined to exert considerable influence over many of the most thoughtful and gifted spirits of his age. It was in 1675, and in the heart of Rome, that he published a Spiritual Guide, in which he pointed out various methods calculated to raise the soul to a state of contemplation and quietude, in which she makes no use of her faculties, is unconcerned about all that may happen, and even about the practice of good works and her own salvation; reposing on the love of God, and, through his presence, safe, all-sufficient, and entirely blest. It can be easily imagined how acceptable the unction of ascetic eloquence might render such doctrine to minds mystically disposed. Multitudes in every age are ready to run after any quack of human happiness who is ingenious enough to hide his fallacies under a show of reason; and Molinos had this advantage over many charlatans, that before deceiving others he had completely deceived himself. He was honest, therefore, and certainly a great advance on the Quietists of the 14th century, called in Greek Hesuchasts, who in their monastery on Mount Athos passed whole days in a state of immobility, "contemplating," as their historians say, "their nose or their navel, and by force of this contemplation finding divine light." Molinos found many partisans in Italy and in France, where his system was fervently embraced by the celebrated poetess and mystic, Madame Guyon, who conceived herself called from above to quit her home and travel, inculcating everywhere the gospel of quietism. Fenelon, whose sweetness and goodness flung a charm around every opinion he expressed, adopted in part the theories of Molinos, and Madame de Maintenon herself is numbered among Madame Guyon's converts to the Spaniard's novel and dreamy creed.

The inmates of Port-Royal, and the Jansenists in general, had, as may be conjectured from the example of Fenelon, strong affinities for quietism; and the sympathy entertained for their sufferings by English Calvinists in the last century, sufficiently accounts for the poet Cowper becoming an admirer of Madame Guyon's writings, and imitating in the Olney Hymns many of her fervent compositions.

Without falling into the errors of the Quietists, Cowper imbibed much of their spirit, and transfused it into his verses very happily. His poetry is essentially of a quietist description, provided the term be understood in a favorable sense. His mind was naturally tranquil, and even during the melancholy of his later days, his mental aberration partook of the original placidity of his character. His rhythm is musical, his language choice, and the flow of his thoughts calm and tranquillizing. He discards stormy and passionate themes from instinct rather than resolve. He delighted in such subjects as "Truth," "Hope," "Charity," "Retirement," "Mutual Forbearance," and

"Domestic happiness, the only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the Fall."

And he has clustered around them all the graces of poetry and charms of Christian philosophy. In that work in which his powers are exhibited to most advantage and at greatest length—The Task—he has touched on every topic that is most soothing, and in verses, many of which have become proverbs, has expressed, with unrivalled precision and ease, thoughts and feelings common to every Christian who is

"Happy to rove among poetic flowers,
Though poor in skill to rear them."

He is never obscure, his emotions are never fictitious, his humor is never forced, nor his satire pointless. Hence he became popular in his generation, and has lost no particle of the credit he once obtained. Brighter stars than he have in the present century come forth and dazzled the eyes of beholders, by the intensity of their radiance and the boldness of their career; but they have not thrown the gentle Cowper into the shade. He still shines above the horizon, "a star among the stars of mortal night," of heavenly lustre, unobtrusive, steadfast, and serene. He still exerts a wholesome influence on society, still refreshes us in the pauses of the battle of life, still refines the taste, fills the ear with melody, elevates the soul, and fosters in many those habits of reflection from which alone greatness and goodness spring. The "Lines on the receipt of his Mother's Picture" have rarely been surpassed in pathos. There never was a poet more sententious or a moralist more truly poetic. "He was," says one of his biographers, "an enthusiastic lover of nature, and some of his descriptions of natural objects are such as Wordsworth himself might be proud to own." His poems, observes Hazlitt, contain "a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself." Of all his encomiasts, none has spoken of him with more fervor than Elizabeth Barrett, afterward Mrs. Browning, and the following stanzas from her beautiful poem called "Cowper's Grave" deserve to be quoted in connection with the present subject:

"O poets, from a maniac's tongue
Was pour'd the deathless singing!
O Christians, to your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling."

But has Cowper had no successor in the peculiar path he so successfully trod? Was Wordsworth not in one sense a Quietist? Were the subjects he selected not as passionless as those of his master, and treated with equal thoughtfulness and calm? No doubt. Yet there was an important difference between them. The quietude which Cowper inculcated was to spring from religion; while that which Wordsworth promoted had its sources principally in contemplation of the beauties of Nature, and in obedience to her powerful influences. Each of these gifted minds has benefitted society, but in different ways; and it is well that, in a poetry-loving age, there should be some counter-balance to the morbid excitement and passionate intensity which the school of Byron, Moore, and Shelley rendered so popular. It is well that minor and gentler streams should irrigate the ground which has been desolated by their torrents of impetuous verse. It is well that divine no less than human love should have its laurel-crowned minstrels, and that principle and conscience should be proved no less poetical than passion and crime.

It is undoubtedly difficult for one who foregoes the passions to rise to a very high eminence as a poet, since the violent emotions of our nature are well adapted to verse, and full of dramatic effect. The bard of Rydal-Mount has, nevertheless, attained a lasting celebrity, after patiently enduring years—long years—of neglect and ridicule. He has carefully eschewed those stormy and harrowing subjects with which poets of the highest genius had, before his time, generally delighted to familiarize our minds. He leaves such themes as Prometheus bound by Jupiter to a rock, with a vulture preying perpetually on his entrails, [Footnote 58] Count Ugolino devouring the flesh of his own offspring in the Tower of Famine, [Footnote 59] and Satan summoning his fallen peers to council in the fiery halls of Pandemonium, [Footnote 60] to such masters as "AEschylus the Thunderous," Dante, and Milton, and addresses himself to the softer and more homely feelings, and to the calmer reason of men. He is firmly persuaded that a truer and deeper source of poetic inspiration is to be found in the every-day sights and sounds of Nature; that the changing clouds and falling waters, the forest-glades, wet with noon-tide dew, the rocky beach, musical with foaming waves, the sheep-walks on the barren hill-side, and the "primrose by the river's brim," supply the imagination with its best aliment, and effectually tend to calm, elevate, and hallow the mind. This is his great, his constant theme. His longer and more philosophical poems ring ever-varying changes on it, and may be called an Epithalamium on the espousals of Man and Nature. But for his devoting a long life to the poetic development of this fundamental idea, we should never have seen our literature enriched by the productions of Shelley and Tennyson's genius. In poetry, as in all that concerns the human mind, there is a law of progress. The poetic harvest-home of one generation is the seed-time of that which is to follow. Thus Dante speaks of two poets (Guinicelli and Daniello) now forgotten, or known only by name, in terms of strong admiration, as predecessors to whose writings he was considerably indebted. [Footnote 61] The following lines are but a sample of a thousand passages in Wordsworth which set forth the agency of natural scenery in the work of man's education and refinement. It is taken from the Prelude, a long introduction to the Excursion, which lay upon the author's shelves in manuscript during forty-five years: [Footnote 62]

"Was it for this,
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder-shades and rocky falls,
And, from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou,
O Derwent! winding among grassy holms
Where I was looking on, a babe in arms.
Make ceaseless music, that composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A foretaste, a dim earnest of the calm
That Nature breathes among the hills and groves?"

[Footnote 58: Prometheus Vinctus.]

[Footnote 59: L' Inferno, c. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 60: Paradise Lost, Book i.]

[Footnote 61: Il Purgatorio, xi. 97; xxvi. 115, 142, 92, 97.]

[Footnote 62: 1805 to 1850.]

Wordsworth's life was an exemplification of the doctrine he taught. Cheerfulness and peace marked his character at each stage of his eighty years' pilgrimage, and, towards the close of his career, he had the satisfaction of perceiving that his works were slowly effecting the result to which he had destined them—making a lasting impression on the literature of his age, and leading many a thoughtful spirit from artificial to natural enjoyments, from the imagery of dreamland to that of daily life, from bombast to simplicity, from passion to feeling, and from turmoil to repose.

"O heavenly poet! such thy verse appears,
So sweet, so charming to my ravished ears,
As to the weary swain, with cares opprest.
Beneath the silvan shade, refreshing rest;
As to the fev'rish traveller, when first
He finds a crystal stream to quench his thirst." [Footnote 63]

[Footnote 63: Dryden's Virgil, Pastoral v.]

Nor was Wordsworth's love of nature and her soothing influences dissociated from religious belief. He was no materialist, maintaining the eternal existence and self-government of the universe by fixed and exclusively natural laws. He was no pantheist, worshipping nature as an indivisible portion of the divine essence—a body of which God is actually the soul. He believed in other laws besides those which regulate the movements of the celestial bodies, and the gradual formation and destruction of the strata that compose the surface of our globe. The view which he took of the material universe was such as became a Christian, and is luminously expressed by him in the following lines:

"I have seen
A curious child applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell.
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard—sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
E'en such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of faith, and doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things.
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."

It is impossible to read the Prelude and the Excursion without perceiving that Wordsworth's passion for natural scenery was no fictitious emotion, assumed for the purpose of appearing brimful of philosophy and sentiment, and making an effective parade of moon and stars, flowers and rivulets, in verse. No, it was a deep and abiding principle—a feeling of which he could no more have divested himself than Newton of his bent toward science, or Beethoven of his ear for music. This unaffected enthusiasm enabled him to speak with the authority of a master, and to instil into the minds of disciples the ideas that had taken so strongly possession of his own.

From the poetry of inanimate nature, the transition was easy to that of simple feelings, particularly in rustic life. In the innocent plays of children of the cot, and the sparkling dews on the cheeks of wild mountain maids, Wordsworth found themes for reflection deep enough to sink into the memory of men. Who has not felt the inimitable simplicity of the verses in which the child, who often, after sunset, took her little porringer, and ate her supper beside her brother's grave, persisted in saying: "Oh! no, sir, we are seven," and in ignoring the power of death to sever or to annihilate? Purity marks all which this chief of the Lake School has composed; for how could he soothe the spirit if, like Moore and Byron, he pandered to vicious inclinations? Hence his successor as Poet-Laureate congratulates himself very properly on wearing

"The laurel greener from the brows
Of him that uttered nothing base."

A poet's best eulogy is that which comes from a poet. Having quoted that of Tennyson, therefore, I shall add that which Shelley also bestows on Wordsworth:

"Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."

The quietude commended by infidel poets is, at the best, that of despair. It is rest without repose, pathetic but not peaceful—a spurious and delusive calm, difficult to attain for a moment, and certain not to endure.

"Yet now despair itself is mild.
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child.
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear." [Footnote 64]

[Footnote 64: P. B. Shelley.]

Such is their language; so writes one of the most distinguished of these "apostles of affliction." How different are the feelings of the Christian "quietist:"

"Nor let the proud heart say.
In her self-torturing hour,
The travail pangs must have their way.
The aching brow must lower.
To us long since the glorious Child is born,
Our throes should be forgot, or only seem
Like a sad vision told for joy at morn,
For joy that we have waked, and found it but a dream."
[Footnote 65]

[Footnote 65: Keble. The Christian Year. Third Sunday after Easter.]

Nor is this strain unreal. The writer's life was the best guarantee for the sincerity of his sentiments, and the response he has wakened in myriads of hearts is a seal set on the depth of his convictions. He hymned not the happiness of the Christian, because the theme suited an ambitious lyre in that it is lofty, or an ordinary one in that it is familiar, but because he was persuaded that the poet's highest glory consists in calming the agitated spirit, as David did when he played cunningly on the harp in the presence of Saul; and that, while it is incumbent on us to make others happy, our paramount duty is to be happy ourselves; that if we are not so, the fault is our own; and that there are in the religion we profess, in every crisis and condition, ample provisions for that happiness to which all aspire.

"O awful touch of God made man!
We have no lack if thou art there:
From thee our infant joys began,
By thee our wearier age we bear."
[Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: Keble. Lyra Innocentium.]

This is the key-note of his thoughtful rhymes.

Keble's reputation as a poet was established long before the leading periodicals of the land called attention to the beauty of his compositions.

Their publication in the first instance is said to have been owing to his seeing several of them in print without being able to conjecture by what means they had found their way to public light. He soon learned, however, that some of his manuscripts, which he had lent to a lady, had been dropped in the street and lost. He therefore resolved on completing and publishing The Christian Year. It was not till nearly twenty years after its first appearance that it received in the Quarterly Review that meed of applause to which it was justly entitled. The article which there called attention to its extraordinary merits was written, we believe; by Mr. Gladstone, whom neither the bustle of parliamentary life, nor the aridity of financial study, renders insensible to the charms of those muses who are generally supposed to haunt woods and caves, and to smile only on the recluse.

To us Catholics the name of Keble will always be remembered with interest, because he shared with Drs. Newman and Pusey the leadership of that great party in the Anglican Church which has given so many children to the true church, and has spread through England and through the world many Catholic doctrines and practices long dormant or forgotten. We think of him with affection, because he carried on to the end the work of soothing the troubled spirit by means of religious verse; because he was through life the friend of that distinguished convert to whose genius and writings we owe so much; and because he has, both in prose and verse, laid down, more clearly and explicitly than any other Protestant writer, the grounds of our veneration of the blessed Mother of God Incarnate.[Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: See Lyra Innocentium, "Church Rites;" and The Month, May, 1866, "John Keble."]

He did not, indeed, follow out his convictions to their legitimate results; he fancied that he responded to them sufficiently by remaining where he was. But his poems will ever remain a witness against the church in which they were composed, because it can never reduce to practice the doctrines he taught in reference to the holy eucharist, the confessional, and the communion of saints. Meanwhile they are silently imbuing the minds of Anglican readers with feelings and arguments favorable to the divine system of the Catholic Church. Though his Christian Year is adapted to the services of the Church of England, and though its chief purpose, as stated in the preface, is "to exhibit the soothing tendency of the Prayer-Book," the author's sympathies are with the Book of Common Prayer in its Catholic, and not in its Protestant aspects. During more than forty years it has been chiselling the Anglican mind into a more orthodox shape. It moulds the chaotic elements of faith into substance, form, and life. It supplies the lost sense of Scriptures, and lays the foundation of towers and bulwarks it cannot build. It opens bright vistas of realized truth, and points to glorious summits from the foot of the hill. It is not inspired with genius of the highest order; the range it takes is more circumscribed in some respects than that of Cowper; it seldom reaches the sublime, and is always pleasing rather than original. But in spite of these drawbacks, it has wound itself more and more into public esteem. No poetry is read more habitually by members of the Established Church. The number of those is very large who take down The Christian Year from their bookshelves every Sunday and festival. It rings every change on the theme Resignation, and presents it in all its truest and most beautiful lights. It has extracted from the sacred writings the very marrow of the text, has developed in a thousand ways the typical and mystic import of Scripture histories, expressed from them abundantly the wine and oil of consolation, and conveyed it to us in poetic ducts of no mean kind.

"As for some dear familiar strain
Untired we ask, and ask again.
Ever, in its melodious store.
Finding a spell unheard before;"
[Footnote 68]

so, many Anglicans of the devouter sort recur to Keble's poems year after year, and end the perusal only with death. Other poets charm and instruct the mind, he forms it; and while others are but read, he is learnt. Even the conviction which he cherished of the heavenly mission of the church of Queen Elizabeth, though misplaced, added to the sweetness and soothing character of his verses. But it is deserving of note that his latter volume, Lyra Innocentium, which contains more lamentation than he uttered before over the shortcomings of his own communion, and more intense aspirations after Catholic dogma and practice, evinces at the same time less inward quietude in the writer, and imparts less of it to the reader. One poem, indeed, called "Mother out of Sight," on the absence of the holy Mother of God from the English mind, invoking her, as it did, in a strain of glorious verse, was omitted, lest it should perplex and disquiet those who were unused to such invocations, and believed them to be forbidden by the Anglican Church.

[Footnote 68: Christian Year, "Morning."]

To cite passages from Keble's poems illustrative of their soothing tendency, would be to copy almost all he wrote. They fell like the dew of Hermon, and were a sign and symbol of the man himself. "His bright, fresh, joyous, and affectionate nature," says one who knew him well, "was an ever-flowing spring, always at play, always shedding a gentle, imperceptible, and recreating dew upon those who came within its reach. There was a Christian poetry about him, a natural gift, elevated and transformed by his consistent piety and religious earnestness, which gilded the commonest things and the most ordinary actions, and cast the radiance of an unearthly sunshine all around him." [Footnote 69] What wonder that the illustrious author of the Apologia used to look at him with awe when walking in the High Street at Oxford? What wonder that, when elected a Fellow of Oriel, and for the first time taken by the hand by the Provost and all the Fellows, he bore it till Keble took his hand, and then, as he said, "felt so abashed and unworthy of the honor done him, that he seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground"? [Footnote 70] Yet the greater was blessed of the less. For depth and subtlety of reasoning, for power and pathos in prose composition. Dr. Newman has surpassed beyond all measure everything which Keble did or could accomplish. In poetry, the world in general has awarded the palm to Keble, and the world, we believe, is right. In the art, at least, of calming the ruffled spirit, the poet of The Christian Year has outdone his beloved rival and friend.

[Footnote 69: The Month, vol. iv. p. 142.]

[Footnote 70: J. H. Newman's Apologia, p. 76.]

The Lyra Apostolica brought Keble and Newman together as athletes in the arena of poetry; and that series of poems affords a good opportunity of comparing their several merits, to those who have the key to the writers' names. They appeared in the British Magazine, signed only with Greek characters representing the following writers:

Alpha | J. W. Bowden.
Beta | R. H. Froude.
Gamma | John Keble.
Delta | J. H. Newman.
Epsilon | R. J. Wilberforce;
Zeta | Isaac Williams.

By far the greater number of the pieces were written by Keble and Newman, and almost all by the latter have reappeared this year in a series, which supplies a poetic commentary on the author's life. These Verses on Various Occasions range over a period of forty-six years, and having each of them the date and the place where composed attached to it, the interest of the whole is thereby greatly increased. Among the poems is that remarkable one, "The Dream of Gerontius," which was published in The Catholic World in 1865. But neither Dr. Newman's verses thus collected, nor the series entitled Lyra Apostolica in general, are marked by that repose which is the prevailing feature of The Christian Year. The motto chosen by Froude for the Lyra was truly combative, and shows the feeling both of Newman and himself, then together at Rome. It was taken from the prayer of Achilles on returning to the battle, and it implores Heaven to make his enemies know the difference, now that his respite from fighting is over.

[Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: Iliad, [Sigma] 125. Apologia, p. 98.]

The scars of warfare are visible even in Newman's hymns. He has evidently passed through many an inward conflict, and fought with, many an external foe. He has vacated ground he once occupied, and he defends principles which he once assailed. He pierces many heights, and depths, and has to be always on his guard against his lively imagination. He is lucid as any star, but not always as serene. He flashes now and then like a meteor; he hints and suggests in nebulous light. He is a pioneer of thought; he shoots beyond his comrades; he walks "with Death and Morning on the Silver Horns." He sees, where others grope; he is at home, where others feel confused and out of place. He is, like Ballanche, [Footnote 72] more satisfied of the truth of the unseen than of the visible world. Mysteries are his solemn pastime. He strikes his harp in Limbo, as Spaniards weave a dance in church before the Holy Sacrament. His dreams are Dantesque; he is half a seer. The veil of death is rent before him, and his soul, by anticipation, launches into the abyss. The chains of the body are dropped, and angels and demons come round him to console and to harass his solitary spirit in its transition state. His condition there, like his poetry, and like himself on earth and in the body, is one of mingled quietude and disturbance;

"And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Had something, too, of sternness and of pain."
[Footnote 73]

[Footnote 72: Dublin Review, July, 1865, p. 10. "Madame Récamier."]

[Footnote 73: "Dream of Gerontius," § 2.]

The happy, suffering soul ("for it is safe, consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God,") sings in Purgatory in a strain identical with that to which it was used in this mortal life:

"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn—
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain
Until the morn;
There will I sing and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb and pine and languish, till possest
Of its sole peace." [Footnote 74]

[Footnote 74: Ibid. § 6.]

There is, indeed, one of Dr. Newman's poems, and that one the most popular and beautiful he has ever composed, which is singularly pathetic and peaceful. Yet even here darker shades are not wanting. The angel faces are "lost awhile," and the "pride" and self-will of former years recur to the memory like spectres. It was in June, 1833, when becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio in an orange-boat [Footnote 75] that Dr. Newman wrote "Lead, Kindly Light." The Pall Mall Gazette—no mean critic—has said of it recently, [Footnote 76] "It appears to us one of the most perfect poems of the kind in the language."

[Footnote 75: Apologia, p. 99.]

[Footnote 76: Jan. 23, 1868]

"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom.
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Would'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

"So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

Fond as Dr. Newman is of modern poetry he has not imitated it. His style is original—a rare mixture of strength, sincerity, and sweetness, moulded rather after the choruses of Greek dramas, than the rich creations of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and Longfellow. Hence his poems bear a nearer resemblance to Milton's Samson Agonistes than to any other English production. His lyrical pieces, again, often remind us of George Herbert, and of Shenstone, Waller, and Cowley. They have a clearness of expression and bright fluency, which makes you love the writer even when you cannot greatly admire his verse. One of the best specimens of his poetic faculty in the Verses on Various Occasions is a poem called "Consolations in Bereavement," written in 1828. It turns on one idea—the rapidity of death's work in the case of the dear sister whom he mourns. He solaces himself with the reflection that the deed was quickly done, and thus derives comfort from a thought which is in most cases afflictive. Perhaps Byron's lines were unconsciously running in his head:

"I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade:
......
Thy day without a cloud hath past,
And thou wert lovely to the last;
Extinguished, not decayed;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high."

Dr. Newman's poetry did not properly fall within the scope of this article, but we have been led to speak of it because he was Keble's colleague in the Lyra Apostolica, and because the verses of the surviving poet have just appeared in England in a new form, and have attracted general attention and been made the subject of admiring and affectionate criticism not merely by Catholic periodicals, but by non-Catholic reviews and newspapers of every political and religious shade. Indeed, the praise bestowed on them by such journalists has exceeded that of our own critics, because it has, generally speaking, been more discriminating and uttered by higher authorities in the literary world.

Let us then rejoice that English literature includes three poets at least—Cowper, Keble, and Wordsworth—who are in a good sense quietists, and the tenor of whose writings, from first to last, is tranquillizing. They may not, perhaps, be the authors who will afford us most pleasure in the tumultuous season of youthful enjoyment; but as years advance, and the trials of life present themselves, one by one, in all their painful reality; as reason matures and reflection ripens; as the probationary character of our mortal existence becomes more and more clear to our apprehension; as the discovery of much that is formal and hollow in society enamors us of rural retreats and sylvan solitudes; as the inexhaustible treasures of beauty and magnificence in the material universe unfold before our gaze; as the things unseen triumph over visible objects in our thoughts and affections, we shall find in such poetry as we have attempted to describe, more that is congenial and charming, and shall cherish with fonder remembrance the names of Cowper, the mellifluous exponent of Christian ethics and delights; of Keble, the bard of Biblical lore; and of Wordsworth, the child and poet of nature. Like skilful tuners of roughly-used instruments, they will reduce to sweetness our spirits' harsher and discordant tones, and fit us to take our part in the everlasting harmonies of the boundless universe. They will each make poetry, in our view, the handmaid of science and revelation, accepting with rapture the vast, amazing discoveries of the one, and ever seeking to harmonize them with the momentous and soul-subduing disclosures of the other. They will impart to mute matter the voice and power of a moral teacher, imbue inanimate things (to our imagination) with life and feeling, inspire us with "a glorious sympathy with suns that set" and rise, with "flowers that bloom and stars that glow," with the birdling warbling on her bough, and the ocean bellowing in his caves; and will lead us by nature's golden steps to the footstool of the Creator's throne; for, in the eyes of such poets, earth is "crammed with heaven," and every common bush on fire with God.

The Early Irish Church. [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 77: Essays on the Origin, Doctrines, and Discipline of the Early Irish Church. By the Rev. Dr. Moran, Vice-Rector of the Irish College, Rome. Dublin, 1864. Pp. vii., 337. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.]

The early Irish Church is now the subject of a close scrutiny and deep study, that bids fair to shed upon it all the light that can be poured upon the subject by such written material as war, oppression, persecution, and penal laws have been insufficient to destroy. There are two schools, and their emulating labors will allow little to escape, both being well versed in ecclesiastical history, the Irish language, annals, and literature.

It is needless to say that there are a Catholic and a Protestant school—the latter of comparatively recent origin. The Anglican Church in Ireland, studying what it had long despised, now seeks to hold forth to the world that it is the real successor and representative of the early Irish Church; while the Catholic Church in Ireland is simply a papal continuation of the foreign church, forced on Ireland by Henry II. and Pope Adrian IV., and their respective successors. Unfortunately, however, the memory of man records not the fact that, in the sixteenth century and later, the Thirty-nine Articles and Book of Common Prayer were presented to the Irish as being the creed and liturgy of its early saints. Those who burnt the crosier of Patrick broke with the early Irish Church as effectually as they did with the romanized Irish Church of later days.

At the beginning of this century, Ledwich, following in the wake of the wild theories of Conyers Middleton, denied entirely the existence of St. Patrick, and his theory met with no little favor among those opposed to the church. Now his existence is admitted, his life studied and written, and efforts made, with no little skill, industry, and learning, to show that the Roman Catholic Church has no claim to St. Patrick or the church which he founded; a church so full of life, that its missionaries spread to other lands, and went forth with papal sanction to plant catholicity or revive fervor on the continent. It is to this curious phase of controversy that we are indebted for the volume of Essays which are here contributed by Doctor Moran, and which evince his learning and research, as well as his fitness for close historical argument.

That there should be much material for a discussion as to so early a period as the fifth century may surprise many, especially those who have always been taught to clear with a bound some ten or more centuries prior to the sixteenth. And it must be admitted that it is indeed surprising, when we consider the wholesale destruction of Irish manuscripts by the English in Ireland from the time of Henry down to the present century. From the period of the invasion to the Reformation, though invaders and invaded were alike Catholic, the English treated the Irish with such contempt that only five families or bloods were recognized as human, and even monasteries were closed to men of Irish race. The literature of the proscribed was of course slighted and despised.

From the Reformation the literary remains of earlier days were proscribed and destroyed, not only as Irish but as popish.

In this almost universal destruction, the ecclesiastical books, missals, sacramentaries, breviaries, penitentials, the canons of councils, doctrinal books, many historical and biographical treatises perished. The Irish people and their church hold by tradition to their predecessors, and claim to be direct successors of the church and converts of St. Patrick. Nor can the Anglican party which destroyed so much of Irish literature now base any argument on the silence of manuscript authority or draw any inference in their favor from the absence of proofs, for whose disappearance they are themselves accountable.

The uninterrupted adherence of the Irish nation to the Roman Church gives it the force of prescription, and it will hold good against all but the most direct and positive evidence.

No mere inferences can invalidate her claim.

The documents regarding the early Irish Church begin with the confession of Saint Patrick and his letter to Coroticus, a piratical British chief, published by Ware in 1656, from four manuscripts, and by the Bollandists from a manuscript in the Abbey of Saint Vaast.

The canons ascribed to the saint were published by the same, as well as by Spelman and Usher.

Of the lives of the saint, the least valuable of all is that by Jocelin, an English monk, who wrote soon after the conquest. This is given in the Bollandists and in Messingham's Florilegium. Earlier and better lives, four in number, were collected and published by Colgan in his Acta Triadis Thaumaturgae, a work of which we doubt the existence of a copy on this side of the Atlantic.

Among these earlier lives, one by Probus is of much value. It was printed, strangely enough, among the works of Venerable Bede, in the Basil edition of that father issued in 1563, and, apparently, the whole work was taken from manuscripts preserved at the Irish convent at Bobbio.

These are the more important material for the life of the apostle of Ireland, together with unpublished matter in some very ancient Irish manuscripts, codices known for centuries, such as the Book of Armagh, a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, which contains a life of Saint Patrick by Muirchu-Maccu-Mactheni; the Leabhar Breac, considered the most valuable Irish manuscript on ecclesiastical matters; the Tripartite Life in the British Museum, the early national annals, etc.

As to the antiquity and value of these ancient codices Westwood in his Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria (London, 1843-5) may be consulted.

For the liturgy of the early Irish Church, we have a missal preserved at Stowe, in England, and ascribed to the sixth century, but which unfortunately has never been fully and completely published; a missal preserved in the monastery founded by Saint Columbanus at Bobbio, and printed by Mabillon in his Iter Italicum; the Antiphonarium Benchorense; the Exposition of the Ceremonies of the Mass preserved in the Leabhar Breac and a treatise on the Mass Vestments in the same volume, as well as the Liber Hymnorum, and various separate hymns.

The lives of the Irish saints, many of which have been published by Colgan, Messingham, the Bollandists, as well as the meagre Irish secular annals, throw much light on the social and religious life of the ancient Irish.

Such is, in brief, the documentary array to be appealed to in the controversy, as to the origin and character of the Irish Church.

And surely what has come down in fragments shows a church which the Anglican Church could not but condemn. The warmest advocate of the identity of the Anglican Church in Ireland with the early Irish Church, would find the old Irish mass, as preserved in the Stowe or the Bobbio missal, a very objectionable worship; the monks and nuns unsuited to our age; and the prayers, penitentiary, and belief in miraculous powers in the church utterly inconsistent with Protestant ideas; while the Catholic Irish would find the mass, if said in one of their churches, so like that they daily hear, that it would excite scarce a word of comment; monks and nuns would certainly excite less; and the prayers of that early day still circulate with the commendation of the actual head of the Catholic Church, the successor of Celestine.

The position having been abandoned that St. Patrick never existed, national pride, which from the days of Jocelin has bent its energies to prove that he was a Briton of the island of Great Britain and born in Scotland, now would prove that he was a genuine Englishman in his total renunciation of papal authority.

In the recent life of St. Patrick by Dr. Todd, this, though treated lightly as a matter of slight import, is really the marrow of the book.

The mission of St. Patrick has been uniformly attributed to Pope St. Celestine, who held the chair of Peter from 422 to 432; and is intimately connected with a previous one of the deacon of Celestine, St. Palladius, who made an unsuccessful attempt to christianize Ireland; and the mission of St. Palladius grew out, it would seem, of a deputation of Gallic bishops to Britain to check the progress of Pelagianism.

Todd endeavors ingeniously to break up these connected facts. He seeks to show that Palladius was a deacon not of St. Celestine, but of St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre; that the history of Palladius and Patrick have been confounded; and that Patrick was not sent to Ireland till 440, and consequently could not have been sent by St. Celestine. This would, to some extent, deliver the early Irish Church from the terrible responsibility of having received its origin from Rome.

Dr. Moran's work is made up of three essays: "On the Origin of the Irish Church and its Connection with Rome;" "On the teaching of the Irish Church concerning the Blessed Eucharist;" and, on "Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in the Ancient Church of Ireland."

In the first of these essays he meets the arguments of the Senior Fellow of Trinity by a careful and close examination, showing that both Palladius and Patrick owed their mission to Rome and to St. Celestine, and settles conclusively the date of St. Patrick's landing in Ireland.

He discusses at length the mission of Palladius; sketches the life of St. Patrick, and his connection with St. Germain; and states briefly the proofs of his Roman mission. He then refutes the array of modern theories in regard to the great apostle from Ledwich to Todd, and accumulates evidence to show how the early Irish Church regarded the holy see.

The period when Saint Palladius and Saint Patrick successively proceeded to Ireland, was not one of obscurity. The church was full of vitality, and met Nestorius in the east, Pelagius in the west, the Manichees in Africa, with the power and might of a divine institution. It was the day of St. Augustine, St. Germain, of Vincent of Lerins, of Cassian, Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome. St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius, even, and St. Anthony were still fresh in the memory of those who had heard the words of life from their lips, or gazed on them in reverence. The Council of Ephesus was actually in session defining the honor due to the Mother of God. The canon of Holy Scripture had been settled thirty-five years before, in the Council of Carthage, and St. Jerome's version was gradually supplanting the Vetus Itala in the hands of the faithful.

The monastic life, a vigorous tree planted at Rome by Athanasius, had already spread over the Latin Church, in its multiform activity and zeal. It grew under the mighty hand of Augustine, was nurtured by that St. Martin of Tours, whose reputation was so widespread. It gave a Lerins, with its school of bishops, writers, and saints; the abbey of St. Victor at Marseilles, where Cassian prayed and wrote.

But if this was a great age of the church, the Roman empire showed no such signs of vitality. It was tottering to its fall. Along its whole western territory, stretching from Italy to Caledonia, the pagan barbarians of Germany were pressing with relentless power, threatening destruction to Roman, romanized Briton, and romanized Gaul—for all of whom the German had but one name, still preserved by the race, the Anglo-Saxon terming the descendants of the Britons Welsh, as the Fleming does the French or the south of Germany the Italian. A little later this German race, last in Europe to embrace the faith and first to revolt from it, overran Britain, establishing the Saxon monarchy, making Gaul the land of Franks, and giving Spain and Italy Gothic sovereigns.

Before this torrent burst, the church in Italy, Britain, and Gaul was closely united. Heresies appeared and gained ground in Britain. To meet this Pelagian enemy, the insular bishops appealed for aid to Gaul. The bishops of that country in council, selected St. Germain and St. Lupus to go to Britain; and Prosper, in his chronicle, assures us that, through the instrumentality of Palladius the deacon, Pope Celestine in 426 sent Germain in his own stead to root out heresy there, and direct the Britons to the Catholic faith.

But this was not the only work. To recover what was straying was well; but a new island was yet to be conquered to the faith, one in which the Roman eagle had never flashed, but which seems to the eye of faith a field white for the reaper.

Attached to Germain by ties of which there is no doubt, was a man of Roman-British race, whose whole associations were with the church of Gaul, who had been a slave for several years in Ireland, and yearned to return to it as a herald of the Gospel. He is stated, in the earliest lives, to have been recommended by Saint Germain to Pope Celestine, as one fitted for such a work. The pope, however, either to give greater dignity to the new mission, or to leave no doubt of the Roman character of the work, chose in 431 Palladius, deacon of the Roman Church, already mentioned, to be the first apostle to the Scots, as the Irish were then termed. Saint Germain and Saint Lupus went to Britain in 429, and labored with zeal and success there during that year and the next. The ancient Irish writer, who wrote a commentary on a hymn in honor of Saint Patrick by St. Fiacc, and who is cited by Irish scholars as scholiast on Saint Fiacc's hymn, states that Saint Patrick accompanied the Gallic bishops to Britain. In itself it would be probable. The intimate relations between the Bishop of Auxerre and the British priest, would naturally lead that prelate to choose him as a companion. That Palladius, who had been the pope's agent in the matter, accompanied them, also, would seem natural. His selection for the Irish mission after Saint Germain's return in 430, would follow as naturally.

He was made bishop, and sent to the Scots (Irish) in 431; and that Saint Patrick was in some manner appointed by the pope to the same work, or connected with the mission with a degree of authority, is evident from the fact that, when Saint Palladius, after an ineffectual attempt to establish a mission in Wicklow, was driven from the country, and died, as some say, in Scotland, his Roman companions at once hastened to Saint Patrick, to notify him as one who possessed some jurisdiction in the matter; and all accounts agree that on this intelligence, Saint Patrick at once proceeded to obtain the episcopal consecration, and sailed to Ireland.

Looking at the whole action of the pope in regard to the checking of Pelagianism in Britain, and the conversion of Ireland, this theory, first suggested by Dr. Lanigan, answers every requirement. It contravenes no fact given by any early author, and is in perfect harmony with every part. The Rome-appointed subordinates of Palladius reported to Patrick as a recognized superior, and it is utterly impossible that between him, the disciple of Germain and Palladius, the Roman delegate to Germain, there could have been diversity of faith or ecclesiastical discipline. The appointment of Patrick to the Irish mission was simultaneous with that of Palladius, to whom the priority was given. On the death of Palladius he succeeded, and required but the episcopal consecration to begin his labors as a bishop in Ireland.

This would make the Roman origin of the Irish Church too clear for Dr. Todd to accept it without a struggle. With what might almost be termed unfairness, he ignores the statement of a perfect catena of Irish writers as to the character of Palladius, in order to make him a deacon, not of the pope, but of Saint Germain.

Later lives of Saint Patrick, written long after the death of the saint, by introducing vague traditions, have doubtless embarrassed the question. That some took his appointment by, Celestine to have required his visiting Rome after the death of Palladius, was natural; but he would really have been appointed by Celestine, even though consecrated in Gaul after the death of that pope, if this was done in pursuance of previous orders of the holy see. It would not be strange to Catholic ideas that Saint Patrick had what would be now termed his bulls unacted upon, either from humility or some other motive; and the history of the church contains many examples where bulls have been so held, to be acted on ultimately only when the necessity of the church made the candidate feel it a duty to assume the burden from which he shrank.

Dr. Moran proves that Patrick drew his mission from Rome by a solid array of authorities, which embrace some of the most ancient Irish manuscripts extant. The Book of Armagh contains two tracts, one the Dicta Sancti Patricii, expressing his wish that his disciple should be "ut Christiani ita et Romani;" the other the annals of Tirechan, written about the middle of the seventh century, stating absolutely that in the thirteenth year of the Emperor Theodosius the Bishop Patrick was sent by Celestine, bishop and pope of Rome, to instruct the Irish.

The Leabhar Breac, styled by Petrie "the oldest and best Irish manuscript relating to church history now preserved," furnishes us evidence no less clear and decisive. The second Life of Saint Patrick, ascribed to Saint Eleran, (ob. 664;) the scholiast on Saint Fiacc, the Life by Probus, are all equally explicit, showing it to have been a recognized fact in Ireland within two centuries after the apostle's own day.

Dr. Moran, besides these, accumulates other authority of a later period, some hitherto uncited, and due to the researches of German scholars among the manuscripts still extant, due to the hands of the early Irish apostles of their land.

One argument of Dr. Todd was based on the silence of Muirchu Maccu Mactheni in the Book of Armagh; but Dr. Moran answers this fully by showing that part of that early writer's work is missing; and that, as the Life of Saint Probus follows, word for word, the parts extant, we may assume that Saint Probus followed him in other parts; and in regard to Saint Patrick's mission, Saint Probus is clear and plain.

The church in Ireland, then, was the spiritual child of Rome and Gaul. Her great missionary, a Breton, came from the schools of Gaul, with authority from Rome, and the church which he founded was in harmony with the church in Britain, Gaul, and Italy. What the faith of the church in those countries was, admits of no doubt; and were there no monuments extant to give explicit evidence of the faith of the Irish Church, this would give us implicit evidence sufficient, in the absence of any contradictory authority, to decide what its faith, doctrines, and liturgy were.

The vice-rector of the Irish College marshals his authorities again and shows that the church founded by an envoy from Rome retained its connection with the holy see and its reverence for the See of Peter. He adduces hymns of the Irish Church, various writings of successive ages, express canonical enactments regarding Rome, and finally the pilgrimages to the holy city, in itself an irrefragable proof of the veneration entertained for Rome; but he crowns all this by adducing the many extant cases in which Irish bishops and clergy appealed to Rome.

But it may be thought that the terrible changes caused by the invasion of the barbarians which in a manner isolated Ireland may have led insensibly to differences of faith or practice in that island, cut off from the centre of unity by the pagan England that had succeeded Christian Britain, and the pagan France that replaced Christian Gaul.

Have we aught to prove what the Irish Church believed and taught; at what worship the faithful knelt; how they were received into the body of believers; what rites consoled them in death? Fortunately there is much to console us here, as well as to convince us. One of the most important parts of the work we are discussing is the clear and distinct manner in which he proves the Irish character of the missal found at Bobbio, and reproduced by Mabillon in his Iter Italicum. Having, by what light we possessed, come to the conclusion that it was in no sense Irish, we examined this portion with interest, and must admit that the proof is clear. Bobbio was a monastery founded by St. Columbanus, and its rich library gave much to the early printers, and yet much still remains in the Ambrosian library at Milan. This missal has no distinctive Irish offices, and its containing an office of St. Sigebert, King of Burgundy, seemed to refute any idea of its being Irish. Yet we know that St. Columbanus founded a monastery at Luxeu before proceeding to Bobbio, and in both places retained his Irish office. The adding of a local Mass would not be strange. In itself this missal corresponds with that Irish missal preserved at Stowe in many essential points, and with no other known missal; the orthography and writing are undoubtedly Irish; the liturgy in itself is not that of Gaul; it resembles it in many respects, but the canon is that of Rome. This striking feature appears in the Stowe missal. Mabillon, from its antiquity, himself infers that Saint Columbanus brought it from Luxeu, and it is as probable that he brought it from Ireland.

It gives us the Mass of the ancient Irish Church, and Curry gives in his lectures a translation of an "Exposition of the Ceremonies of the Mass" from the Irish in the Leabhar Breac. The Mass and the exposition place beyond a doubt the belief of the Irish Church in the Real Presence. The exposition is as distinct as if written to meet any opposition. "Another division of that pledge, which has been left with the church to comfort her, is the body of Christ and his blood, which are offered upon the altars of the Christians; the body even which was born of Mary the Immaculate Virgin, without destruction of her virginity, without opening of the womb, without the presence of man; and which was crucified by the unbelieving Jews out of spite and envy; and which arose after three days from death, and sits upon the right hand of God the Father in heaven." (Curry's Lectures, p. 307.)

The words of the Mass are no less explicit, and the Bobbio missal contains these words: "Cujus carne a te ipso sanctificata, dum pascimur, roboramur, et sanguine dum potamur, abluimur." The whole early literature, the lives of the saints, and other monuments teem with allusions to the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood, and the saying of Mass is not unfrequently expressed by the term "conficere Corpus Domini."

The proofs adduced by Dr. Moran on this point extend to sixty pages, showing the most exact research and learning, and accumulating evidence on evidence, meeting and refuting objections of every kind.

The sacrament of penance and its use is no less apparent; nor is the devotion to the blessed Virgin and the saints a point on which the slightest doubt is left.

Dr. Moran's work is certainly, since the appearance of Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History, (4 vols. Dublin, 1822,) the most valuable treatise on the early Irish Church, and completely sets at rest the theories set up by W. G. Todd, in A History of the Ancient Church in Ireland, London, 1845; and with great learning and skill by James H. Todd, in his Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland: A Memoir of his Life and Mission, Dublin, 1864.

We need now a popular treatise embracing the result of his labor, in a small volume, like the work of W. G. Todd, and a volume containing the Bobbio missal, (that at Stowe is probably sealed,) with the treatise on the Mass and vestments from the Leabhar Breac, and a selection of the prayers and hymns of the early church that have come down to us. With these common in the hands of the clergy, to familiarize them with what remains of the church of their fathers, we may hope to see the old Irish Mass, the "Cursus Scottorum" or Mass of the early Irish Church, chanted by the cardinal archbishop of Dublin on the great patronal feast, as the Mozarabic liturgy is in Spain, or the Ambrosian at Milan. It would be a living proof that, if the Irish and other churches laid aside their peculiar liturgies to adopt exclusively that of Rome, it was not that the former were objectionable; but that unity was too desirable to be postponed.

My Angel.

"He hath given his angels charge over thee."

There's an angel stands beside my heart,
And keepeth guard.
How I wish sometimes that he would depart,
And its strong desires would cease to thwart
With his stern regard!

But he never moves as he standeth there
With unwinking eyes;
And at every pitfall and every snare
His silent lips form the word, "Forbear!"
Till the danger flies.

His look doth oft my purpose check
And aim defeat.
And I change my course at his slightest beck.
'Tis well, or I soon would be a wreck
For the waves to beat.

Translated From The French.

An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 78]

[Footnote 78: Rosa Ferrucci: her Life, her Letters, and her Death, By the Abbé H. Perreyve.]

[The first Italian edition of the Letters of Rosa Ferrucci appeared at Florence in 1857, a request for their publication having been made to her mother by his Eminence Cardinal Corsi, Archbishop of Pisa. The pious prelate was not less desirous of seeing the account of so edifying a death published, when he had learned the circumstances from the Prior of San Sisto, who had attended Signorina Ferrucci in her last moments.

A second edition appeared in 1858, enriched with numerous details, at the express request of Monsignor Charvaz, Archbishop of Genoa.

During a brief stay which I made at Pisa, Monsignor della Fanteria, vicar-general of the diocese, spoke to me of the profound impression which the death of Signorina Ferrucci had left on all memories, and of the edification which he hoped from her Letters. He expressed a wish that they should be made known in France, and even urged me to undertake their translation myself.

Authorities such as these, and the testimony of persons of undoubted judgment as to the good this little work has already done, have determined me to publish it for the second time. May it edify yet again some young souls, by showing them in Christianity an ideal too often sought elsewhere.

December, 1858.]

The following are the circumstances which led to the publication of the Letters here presented to the reader.

Toward the end of April, last year, (1857,) as I was returning from Rome, I stopped at Pisa. The hand of God conducted me then into the midst of a family, of whose unclouded happiness I had been the witness only a few months before, but which had now, alas! been visited by death. It was one of those sudden, heart-rending bereavements which make one falter on the desolated threshold of his friend, and which chill on one's lips the tenderest words of consolation.

What would you say to the father and mother who lose an only daughter—their joy, their life, and, moreover, the pride and the edification of a whole town? Better be silent and ask God to speak.

Happily, in this case, God did speak; and the noble souls whose sorrows are to be recounted here, were of the number of those who know his voice.

After the first tears and the first outpouring of a grief which time rendered only the more poignant, the poor mother asked me to accompany her to the house where her daughter had died, and which she herself had quitted from that day. A servant belonging to one of the neighboring houses had the keys of this funereal dwelling, and he opened the doors for us. We expected to find only the presence of death and the vivid remembrance of the sorrows of yesterday in the silence of those deserted chambers; but Christian charity had watched over the spot, and from our first steps a delicate perfume of roses betrayed its loving attentions. Indeed, we found the chamber of the dead girl strewn with flowers. They were fresh, some faithful hand having renewed them that very morning. This unlooked-for spectacle awakened in our minds the thought that the Christian's death is not so much a death as a transformation of life. Therefore it was that, when, kneeling near the poor sobbing mother, I asked her if she wished me to recite the De Profundis, she answered in a firm voice and almost smiling, "No, let us recite the Te Deum."

The hymn concluded, I led the pious woman from that room where her sorrow seemed changed into exultation, and I said to her on the way: "From all that I know, from all that I can learn of your daughter, she was a saint. The delicate piety of your neighbors attests how powerful is still the recollection of her: the example of her life, and the details of her holy death, must not be lost. You must preserve them for the edification of her companions; for the edification of the town which has known her, loved her, venerated her; for the edification of ourselves also, who must one day die, and whom the examples of all holy deaths encourage and support." I was not the first to express this desire; many friends had anticipated me in begging for a history which they believed well calculated to reflect honor on our holy religion.

Before I left Pisa, I had obtained the desired promise, pledging myself, at the same time, to make known in France, to some Christian readers, this history, wrung from the anguish of a mother by the single desire of promoting the glory of God. Some months later, the book appeared at Florence, with the following title, Rosa Ferrucci, and some of her Writings, published under the supervision of her Mother. It remains, then, for me to fulfil, on my part, the pious obligation I have contracted.

Rosa Ferrucci was the daughter of the celebrated Professor Ferrucci, of the University of Pisa, and of the Signora Caterina Ferrucci, a lady well known in Italy for her poetry, and for some excellent works on education. It is little more than a year since this young girl was, by her brilliant intellectual gifts and the holiness of her life, the honor of the city of Pisa. The grave habits of a Christian family, all the veils, all the precautions, all the fears of modesty, had not been able to shield her from a sort of religious admiration which she inspired in all who saw her. How prevent mothers from pointing out the holy child to their daughters, or the poor from blessing her as she passed? Rosa possessed natural talents of a high order, and her education was singularly favorable to the full development of every gift of mind and heart. At six years of age she read Italian, French, and German. At a later period she knew by heart the whole of the Divine Comedy. She read in the original, under the direction of her mother, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus; and, among modern authors, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fenelon, Fleury, Milton, Schiller, Klopstock. I mention at random the authors' quoted by her in her letters to her friends, passing by writers of our own day. She has left a correspondence in three languages—French, German, and Italian. The greater number of the Italian letters are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, Signor Gaetano Orsini, a distinguished lawyer and perfect Christian, to whom Rosa was betrothed, and whose hopes have been shattered by her death. Each part of her correspondence is remarkable, but it is of the last-mentioned letters that I propose particularly to speak. Independently of her correspondence, Signorina Ferrucci wrote many short treatises on religion and Christian morality, several of which have been published since her death.

Here, then, we find in a young girl a degree of mental cultivation—a depth of learning, I might say—which would be remarkable in a man even of distinguished education. To dwell long on gifts so rare would interfere with the object I proposed to myself in writing this little history. I will, then, remark here, once for all, that, having for several weeks lived on terms of intimacy with this excellent family, I have witnessed in this extraordinary girl only a child-like modesty, which made her always skilful in self-concealment.

I omit, then, all that relates to this intellectual culture, and to this taste for classical learning—a taste which was so pure, so exalted, in this young Christian maiden. Understood and accepted in Italy, this literary turn of mind would seem strange in France, where there exists an extravagant fear of raising woman above a certain intellectual level. I prefer, therefore, having said on this point merely what was necessary, to speak henceforth only of the virtues of the saintly girl.

Even of these I shall specify but one. I leave it to pious imaginations to guess what there must have been of meekness, of purity, of obedience, of modesty, of angelic devotion, in such a soul. I shall speak only of her charity. Love for the poor was with her a passion, and that from her tenderest years. Certain souls seem to come into this world commissioned by God to do honor to a particular virtue; everything in them converges to that as to a divine centre. The voice of a mother and the voice of the church have but to quicken the germ of holiness committed to such souls before their terrestrial journey, and, as soon as the development of reason allows them to act, they tend quite naturally to the end which the finger of God had pointed out to them from above. Rosa Ferrucci brought with her a tender and unbounded love for the poor. From the little birds which, while yet an infant, she used to feed in winter-time, to the poor beggars of Pisa, whom she relieved by denying herself in dress and amusements, and the neglected graves to which she carried flowers, "because," she used to say, "I feel a pity for neglected graves," all poverty touched her heart. Her mother relates some affecting incidents of her great charity. During a severe winter her parents remarked that she no longer ate bread at her meals, although she never failed to pick out the largest piece for herself. They affected not to know her motive, which she explained, blushing: "Have I done wrong? Indeed, I did not know it was wrong; but bread is so dear this year, and this piece would be sufficient for one poor person."

If she met in her walks a poor woman tottering under the weight of a load of wood, her first impulse would be to run to help her, and it was difficult to restrain this charitable eagerness. She would then complain, declaring that she could never get accustomed to seeing poor people toiling so hard.

On her birthday she ran to her mother and said to her: "Gaetano is indeed all that I could wish! We have just formed a project which makes me quite happy. We have promised that on our birthdays and saints' days, instead of making each other presents, which are often useless, we will give a large alms to some poor family."

She was a good musician, and knew how to interpret truly the sentiment of the masters. One day she went to Florence, accompanied by her brother, to purchase some pieces of music. But just as she was entering the town, she met a poor family, who seemed to be in the last extreme of wretchedness. Their rent must be paid the next day, or these poor people would be homeless. Farewell to the pieces of music! And on her return home, when her friends, to conceal their real joy and admiration, affected to chide her, she answered: "What would you have had me do? I could not help it. Tell me yourselves how I could have done otherwise than I did? Now, you see well that it was impossible!" O holy impossibilities! which embarrass only those who can never be resigned to the sufferings of others.

Innumerable are the incidents of this kind which might be related of Rosa; for charity is never weary, the more good it has done, the more it desires to do; but I leave this subject—reluctantly, indeed—to dwell at more length on the two episodes of this Christian life, in which I think may be found the most solid edification and the best encouragement for souls. I speak of a love and a death, both transfigured by the cross.

The transfiguration of the life and heart of man in chastity, in hope, in sacrifice, is a palpable glory of Christianity and one of the surest marks of its divinity. Jesus Christ, when he came to sanctify the world, did not destroy the natural conditions of human life. Since, as before, the shedding of his blood, man is born in suffering; he weeps, combats, loves, and dies. And yet, if he is a Christian, all is changed for him. From his cradle to his grave he walks in a marvellous light, which transfigures all things in his eyes and thoroughly changes the meaning of life. He suffers, but each day he adores suffering on the cross; he weeps, but he has heard that, Blessed are they who weep! he combats, but with his eyes fixed on heaven; he loves, but in all that he loves, he loves God; he dies, but then only does he begin to live. Nay, even the entrance into beatitude is for the Christian not the last transfiguration; for a blissful eternity is but a continuous transfiguration in a glory ever increasing, and, as it were, the eternal flight of created love toward Infinite Love. This divine flight finds in heaven its region of glory; but it must not be forgotten that its starting-point is earth—that before finally gaining the eternal heights, it must first cross "the fields of mourning, lugentes campi." [Footnote 79]

[Footnote 79: Virg. AEn. i. 4.]

Hence it is, that for the saints there is no interruption between heaven and earth; the same path that conducted them yesterday from virtue to virtue, will lead them to-morrow from glory to glory, and their death is but an episode of their love. Hence, also, perhaps that mysterious fraternity of love and death which is the soul of all true poetry; men catch a glimpse of it and chant it in their own tongue:

"The twin brothers, love and death,
At the same time, gave birth to fate."
[Footnote 80]

[Footnote 80: Léopardi.]

But only the saints know its true secret: "Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ." [Footnote 81]

[Footnote 81: Phil. I. 23.]

When the young soul of whom we now speak had reached a certain elevation in her flight toward God, she, too, met the sweet and austere company of those two strong-winged angels—Christian love and death. She loved: almost as soon she presaged death, and she died. But she loved as a child of God loves, and she died as a saint.

I have, then, little more to do than to translate her Letters, in which shines gloriously the beauty of Christian love, and to give an account of that death worthy of the church's brightest days. As I have already remarked, these Letters are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, to whom Rosa had been betrothed for two years before her death; a truly noble character whom heaven seemed to have made worthy of her. A profound and tender love united these two kindred souls. The simple and sweet manners of good Italian society allowed their seeing each other often, and did not forbid their almost daily correspondence. An entire conformity of faith, of piety, of holy desires, blended into a still closer union those hearts already so strongly bound to each other; but a more celestial ray was continually passing from the soul of Rosa into that of Gaetano. Through her joys, her hopes, the festive preparations for her wedding, and the dreams of the future, this pious young girl always saw God. One idea, immense and insatiable, was dominant over all her desires, the idea of perfection. She gazed through the veil of her joyous dawnings on the divine sun of eternal beauty. Her happiness embellished earth to her, but the earth thus embellished immediately reminded her of heaven; earthly love put a song on her lips, but the song soon became a hymn, and always ended with God. It is this insensible and almost involuntary transition, of which she herself seems unconscious, from an earthly affection to ardent longings after divine love and perfection, which constitutes all the beauty of her Letters. The reader must not forget that they were written by one who was little more than a child, and that whatever there was of maturity in her young soul was derived from that sun of Christian faith whose warm rays ripen the intellect, in the continued childhood of the heart.

I would fain believe that this young Christian's sisters in the faith, will find in her Letters something more than a subject of poetical dreaming. In truth, no life is so really practical as that of a saint; and, through the veil of beautiful language, we may discover in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci many duties faithfully performed by her, many lessons of duty faithfully to be performed by ourselves. I would then beg of those young persons to read the following pages with recollection, and, in order to penetrate their true meaning, to enter as much as possible into this young girl's ardent desire of perfection.

I have spoken of the eternal soaring of souls toward God. Have you ever, in the beginning of autumn, watched those flights of birds which, lengthening out in a long train, follow, to the very last, the same sinuosities? 'Tis said that the strongest, flying in advance, cleaves the air; and that the weaker, coming after, enter with ease the aerial furrow. Ah! too feeble that we are to attempt alone the road to heaven, let us at least learn to enter the furrows of the saints. Their strong and certain wing will draw us onward in their track; and when we shall see them so lovely because they were so loving, we shall advance with less fear toward Him who was the supreme object of their love.

Rosa To Gaetano.

Pisa, April 6, 1856.

I can never thank God enough for giving me in you, Gaetano, an example and a guide for my whole life. I cannot refrain from often saying so to my mother, and I say it because it is in my heart. Spite of all the faults and imperfections which have so many times prevented me from remaining faithful to the good resolutions which I constantly make before God, I have so high an idea of the perfection of a Christian wife, and of the duties I shall soon have to fulfil, that I should indeed be terrified if I did not confide in the goodness of God, who can do all, and who will aid me who can do nothing. I often speak to my mother of the holy respect with which the sacrament we are going to receive inspires me; and I earnestly beg of you to ask our Lord for the graces which are necessary to make me what I ought to be. I promise you to use all my efforts for this end; and I will dedicate the prayers of the month of May to this intention, for I have great confidence that the Blessed Virgin will obtain for me what I still lack. I believe that we shall have made great progress toward perfection when we come to detest sincerely all those little daily faults which seem trifles to us, but which must be so very displeasing to the infinite perfection of God. In all this, be sure that I will receive your counsels and admonitions as they ought to be received from him who, by the will of God, takes the place of father and mother.

April 17.

I am persuaded that the true means of preparing ourselves to receive the sacrament by which we shall be united for time and eternity is, to use all our efforts to attain that state of Christian perfection to which God calls us; and I am also sure that, if we cannot arrive absolutely at that degree of perfection which we ardently desire, we can at least kindle in our hearts the flames of that divine love which is itself the whole law. In this you will be my guide and my example, Gaetano; we two shall have but one will, one love also, loving each other in God, in whom all affections become holy. Our affection did not spring from outward accomplishments, nor from fleeting beauty, that flower of a day. It was a stronger tie that bound our souls together. We love each other because we love God. In him does our union consist, because in him is all the strength, all the purity of our love; because in him also is our supreme end. Hence come those alternations of joy and sadness, according as we approach, or seem to be receding from, that ideal type of perfection which is the object of our desires. Ah! how good God is; and how often I bless him for having put such desires and such hopes into our hearts. For me, I now see in God not only the eternal power which created heaven and earth, or the eternal love which redeemed us, but also that sweet mercy which has given me in you, as it were, his crowning blessing.

April 25.

Forgive me, Gaetano, my eternal repetitions; but what can I do? For some time I have been able only to say the same things over and over again. This very day reminds me of another day, a dear and solemn one to me. I recollect with unspeakable pleasure the solitary walk I took, with my mother to speak of you. The stillness of the country, the fresh aspect of all nature, the distant voices of the peasants, which alone from time to time broke the profound tranquillity of the scene—all seemed new to me, all spoke to my heart. I shall never forget the humble little church in which, for the first time, I ventured to pray to God to bless these new thoughts—thoughts which held me suspended, as it were, between doubt and hope, but which found my heart firmly resolved to do the divine will in all things. From that day I have implored, and still unceasingly implore, the graces which we need in order to lead together a truly Christian life. Do you do the same, Gaetano; and let me assure you that I cannot now pray to God for myself, without at once finding your name mingled in my supplications.

April 30.

He only is worthy of a reward who has merited it. Do you not know that combat—and what is life but a continual combat?—must precede victory? No, Gaetano, we will not be like cowardly soldiers who would fain have the honors of a triumph without having seen the face of the foe. Let us rather strive to lay hold on eternal felicity, which alone can satisfy our desires, by faithfully performing all our duties; by supporting, for the love of God, all the trials of life, heavy or light; by devoting ourselves as much as possible to good works; then the desire of heaven will not be for us a dreamy ideal or subject of vague speculation, but it will enter into our daily life to sanctify it. May your life be prolonged to serve the cause of God by strong and constant virtues!

May 2.

I believe that, without proposing to ourselves a too ideal and, as it were, an unattainable type of perfection, we can effect much by earnestly striving to strengthen our will. Let us keep a watch over it, and never allow it to incline toward what is evil, even in the smallest things. Let us always bear in mind those beautiful words of the Following of Christ: "If each year we corrected one fault, how soon we should become better!" Yes, strength of will is always necessary, and not less in small trials than in great ones. In this, it seems to me Christian perfection really consists; for what can be more pleasing to God than to see our will always conformed to his? [Footnote 82]

[Footnote 82: The desire of Christian perfection had inspired Rosa Ferrucci with the idea of collecting some short maxims, which were well exemplified in her pious and innocent life. Among her papers were found this little selection, which seems to us worthy of translation.

"To see God in all created things. To refer all to God. To remember always 'God sees me.' To have a tender love for the holy Catholic Church. To unite my actions to those of Jesus Christ. To keep alive in my heart the desire of heaven. To beg of God the faith and the constancy of the martyrs. To have an unwavering confidence in the efficacy of prayer. To succor the poor for the love of God. To watch and pray. To do good to all. To obey my father and mother. To be gentle and docile to my teachers. To be silent as soon as I perceive in my heart the first motions of anger. Never to read a doubtful book. To have a scrupulous regard to truth. Never to speak ill of any one. To view in the best light the actions of others. To subdue all feelings of envy. To pray often for humility. Never to slight God's holy inspirations. To work and study diligently. Frequently to raise my heart to God. To forgive all, at all times and in all things. To seek my happiness in the performance of Christian duties. To do whatever is my duty, and for the rest trust to the goodness of God. To fear sin more than death. To ask for the sacraments at the beginning of a serious illness. To speak to God as a tender and beloved father. To unite my death to that of Jesus Christ."]

May 30.

No affection which has not its source in the love of God can ever make us happy. Let us be well convinced of this, and let us dedicate our whole life to Him who has done all for us. As for me, I believe that just as the external pomp of worship is valueless in the sight of God if it is separated from interior devotion, so works can do nothing to merit grace unless they are inwardly animated by a pure intention and the desire of pleasing God alone. We must, then, always pass from what is without to what is within, and it is this that I mean when I tell you that I often seek in visible things a lever to raise me toward the invisible; discerning in all that meets my eyes here below an image of that Eternal Beauty which unveils itself only to the intelligence and to the heart. Thus nothing remains mute to me. How many things the mountains tell me, and the stars, and the sea, and the trees, and the birds!—things which I should not have known if this mighty voice of nature had not taught them to me. Oh! how admirable is the goodness of God, who thus by a thousand ways leads back our souls to the thoughts and the holy affections for which they were created.

I have been reading in the Revue des Deux Mondes, this beautiful idea of Jean Paul Richter: "When that which is holy in the soul of the mother responds to that which is holy in the soul of the son, their souls then understand each other." This thought has made a great impression on me; and it seems to me to contain a grand lesson for all mothers engaged in the religious education of their sons. It shows us, moreover, the nature of those close ties which unite us to our relations and our friends. And, indeed, why do we love one another with such a true and constant love? Because what is sacred to your soul is sacred also to mine. Why am I so deeply moved when I hear of some noble action? when I contemplate the greatness of this world's heroes, and, above all, the greatness of the saints and martyrs? Why do I weep as I think of the sacrifices they made with such self-devotion and fortitude? Because what they held sacred I also hold sacred. Could more be said in so few words? Yes, every man ought to keep alive that celestial fire which God has kindled in his heart. Unhappy he who lets it languish and die out! He loses it for himself, and is himself lost for his brethren, since he has broken the bond of love which would have united him to them for ever. As the flame ascends on high,

"Which by its form upward aspires,"

SO by nature our souls tend to rise toward God, and if they return again toward earth, there can be no longer for them either hope of peace or hope of happiness.

July 10.

Let us not be discouraged, Gaetano, let us always hope; our good God will help us to become better; for, if we lack strength, at least we are not wanting in good desires. They are a gratuitous gift of him who wills our good; of him who has given us the most living example of humility; of him who knows, and will pardon, the weakness of our poor nature, if only we will combat with that perseverance which alone has the promise of victory. Ah! if we truly loved the Lord, we should think of him alone—of him who is holy and perfect, instead of always thinking of ourselves, weak and miserable creatures; and we should end by forgetting ourselves, by losing ourselves, to live only in him so worthy of our love; and then we should indeed begin to know that we are nothing, and that he is all.

Jesus wishes us to be gentle with ourselves, and would not have us fall into dejection when, through the frailty of our nature, we fail in our good resolutions. At times when we are too much dejected at the sight of our miseries, Jesus Christ seems to say to us, as to the disciples going to Emmaus: "What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad?" He who is called the Prince of Peace would have us pacific toward ourselves, and full of compassion for our own infirmity. When, therefore, we are seized with sadness at sight of our poverty and of the dryness of our souls, let us say simply and humbly this little prayer of St. Catharine of Genoa: "Alas! my Lord, these are the fruits of my garden! Yet I love thee, my Jesus, and I will strive to do better in future."

July 19, (Feast of St Vincent de Paul.)

Do you know what we ought to desire? Neither honors, nor riches, nor any such earthly vanities, which could add nothing to our peace. Do you know to what end our will, strengthened by love, ought to turn? Yes, you know it well, and often have you taught it me; we ought both to aim at realizing in our life something of that perfection which, after all, can be but partially obtained on earth. We ought to look at the things that are immortal and eternal, rather than at those that are temporal and subject to change, living in such a manner that a true love of God may actuate our hearts and our thoughts, develop our sentiments toward what is good, and direct all our actions to a holy end. How many touching examples of virtues are recalled to our minds by this day and the festival which it brings! What indefatigable and universal charity in St. Vincent de Paul! What lively and ardent piety! What unbounded compassion for all the errors, all the faults, all the misfortunes, all the sufferings, physical and moral, of men! What exhaustless patience! And who among us will dare to say that he cannot reproduce in himself some shadow of those beautiful virtues? If we cannot, like this illustrious saint, relieve the sufferings of a great number of our fellow-beings, at least we can be humble, patient, and animated by that true religion which is ever forgiving, ever loving, because it loves Him who is all mercy and all love.

To Be Continued.

The Episcopalian Confessional.

It is with great satisfaction that Catholics behold the adoption by any class of Protestants of their peculiar rites or ceremonies. It is an indication of an approach to the doctrines so vehemently renounced at the Reformation, and ought, by strict logic, to result in the return of many to the old faith. And though, unfortunately, there are men who play with religious doctrines as if they were of no practical consequence, there are always some who are in earnest, and are found ready to make sacrifices for the sake of truth. From the use of Catholic ceremonies, which are really all founded on vital doctrine, some conversions must certainly flow; and the Protestant Church, which moves in such a direction, is drifting from its old moorings, and floating toward the safe waters where the bark of St. Peter rides out every storm.

If there be any of our practices which are essentially a part of our religious system, surely that of confession is one which is absolutely peculiar to the Catholic Church. It cannot lawfully exist without the faith which we hold, and when used, it drags along with it, irresistibly, our whole moral system. It is hard to see how any one can confess his sins to a priest, without accepting the sacerdotal and sacramental system, which can have no life out of the Catholic communion. Besides, the practical influence of such confessions leads directly to those habits of devotion which have no home in Protestantism. In the few remarks we are now to make, we do not intend to lose sight of these convictions, while it is our object to consider briefly the adoption of the confessional in the Protestant Episcopal Church, the logical consequences which flow from it, and even the dangers which attend it. Surely the subject is one of great moment. If it be of any importance at all, it is of vital importance. It is either necessary to the soul, or it is an assumption of powers prejudicial to the interests of true religion. It cannot be looked upon as an indifferent matter, which may be used or neglected, according to the taste of the individual. To a few reflections, therefore, upon it, we earnestly invite the attention of the honest reader.

1. There is no doubt that there is quite a party in the Episcopal Church which upholds the practice of auricular confession, and seeks to extend it. There are ministers of that communion who are anxious to set up the confessional, and disposed to teach its necessity. In the city of New York, it is well known that the clergy of St. Albans' are solicitous to hear confessions and love to be styled Fathers, on account of their spiritual relation to their penitents. The Rev. Dr. Dix, the respected rector of Trinity Church, the oldest and most influential corporation of his denomination, is said to have quite a number of penitents, and to be the most popular confessor, especially among the higher class. We presume he makes no secret of his practice, while his position as the spiritual director of the "Sisters of St. Mary" is notorious. How general is the custom of confession in Trinity parish we have no means of knowing, nor do we know how many of the assistant ministers follow in the wake of their rector. We have heard of one or two others who are disposed to be confessors, and there are probably many such ministers whose names are not brought before the public. We cannot suppose that any high-minded clergyman would be willing to hear confessions in an under-hand or secret manner, and we must believe that they who do so are not ashamed of it, nor unwilling to have their practice made public. No offence is therefore intended by the mention of names, and we will rest satisfied that none is given. How many of the bishops favor auricular confession does not appear. So far as we have heard, no one has openly recommended it; but the Right Reverend Dr. Potter, of New York, has allowed a manual to be dedicated to him, in which the practice is strongly urged, and devotions for its use are extracted from Catholic prayer-books. While he has rebuked the Rev. Mr. Tyng for preaching in a Methodist church, he goes openly to St. Alban's, and, to say the least, gives sanction to Ritualistic performances. We have a right, then, to conclude that he favors the confessional, and is willing to see it set up in the churches which he superintends. It will be observed that this confession in the Episcopal Church, is not simply consulting a clergyman in a private conversation about spiritual matters, but the humble acknowledgment of sins in detail, in order to receive absolution from one who thinks himself authorized by Almighty God to give it. It is certainly a sacrament in the true definition of the term, an outward sign of an inward grace, administered by one pretending, at least, to bear a commission from Christ. Those who go to the Episcopalian ministers to confess their sins, surely go under this belief, and no argument is necessary to show that they would not go, unless under the conviction that their offences against God could be forgiven in no other way. The Ritualists have made of this a most important matter in their devotional books, where can be found questions for examination of conscience, tables of sins, and prayers to excite contrition and improve the great gift of absolution. When, then, we speak of the confessional in the Protestant Episcopal communion, we are not drawing upon fancy, but touching upon a fact which must have an important effect upon the body which it especially interests.

2. The first remark we have to make upon this acknowledged fact is almost a truism. It is, that auricular confession is not a Protestant practice, but quite the contrary; and that they who adopt it cut themselves off from all sympathy with the doctrines of the reformation. We hardly need to prove that there is not one Protestant church which approves of the custom of which we speak, or believes that its ministers have the power to remit and retain sin. If the Church of England be adduced against us, we have only to point to the incontrovertible fact, that she declares that penance is not a sacrament, and therefore conveys no inward grace. The absolutions left in her daily services are only declaratory of God's willingness to forgive the repentant sinner, and could be as well used by a layman as by a minister. For who cannot say that "God pardoneth and absolveth all who are truly penitent"? And as for the absolution in the office of the visitation of the sick, we have only to say that it is a relic of by-gone days which is seldom used, and that whatever be its meaning, it cannot, contrary to the article, be presumed to confer grace. The English Church certainly did never consider it a matter of any necessity, otherwise it would have said so. The Episcopalians in the United States have not this form to refer to; for the compilers of their liturgy have expunged it altogether, at the same time that they omitted the Athanasian creed. In the form of the ordination of priests, a substitute was also provided for the old words, "Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall remit, they are remitted unto them." The reason of this substitution we leave the honest reader to imagine. We are informed that very few of the bishops are willing to use the old form, and an Episcopal minister of Puseyitical views once told us that he was very anxious to have the bishop who ordained him use it, but was restrained from asking this favor by the assurance of one of the prelate's intimate friends that, if he said anything about it, he would get a flat refusal, together with a good scolding. While thus the articles of faith in the Episcopalian body deny the power of absolution, the practice of that denomination of Christians is entirely against it. The ministers who hear confessions and the people who make them, live in a "dreamland," about which once we read a very pretty piece of poetry. This "dreamland" is not very extensive or tangible here, and we wonder if now there are any somnambulists in or about Buffalo. We yield the right to every man to do as he pleases, and call himself what he likes, only we object to his having two contradictory characters at the same time. It is not quite reasonable; and we say, with the good common sense of mankind, "My dear friend, choose for yourself, but please be either one thing or the other."

But we go further, and assert that the practice of confession is the assumption of a sacerdotal power which was the very first point attacked by the reformation, and which is really the central point of the Catholic system. Once admit the great power of absolution, and you receive at the same time logically the doctrine of priesthood as it is held by the Church. This doctrine does not and cannot stand alone; it brings with it the church in her unity, and the necessary safeguards which divine wisdom has thrown around the exercise of so great a gift. Who has the power to forgive sins? Not every man, nor every one who may choose to call himself a priest. There must be some external call to so high an office; and as it is Christ's priesthood which is exercised, there must be some way of authenticating the power delegated, and articulating it to the great head of Christianity. The Catholic Church alone maintains the practice of confession, and if she is good for this, she is good for everything. Eclecticism may be advisable in matters of science, but in divine revelation it is both absurd and impossible. The foundation of faith is in the word of God. The church is no teacher if she be not guided by supernatural light; and if she be thus guided, her authority is universal. Episcopalians may believe that their ministers can forgive their sins, but they have no reason for such a belief. Their own church surely does not say so, while the Catholic voice expressly denies it. It will be hard to see how they can prove it from Scripture as applied to their particular communion. Not only is the unity of the church connected logically with the idea of priesthood, but also that of sacrifice, and of sacramental grace. And these doctrines bring with them the Tridentine system of justification, which is diametrically opposed to the Lutheran theory which underlies all consistent Protestantism. We do not believe that any one can go to confession for any length of time, and not feel the truth of these remarks. He will be irresistibly borne to the gates of the Catholic Church with whose faith his religious life will be in sympathy, and he will, day by day, lose his love and respect for his own communion.

3. So far, therefore, we have reason to rejoice in the adoption of the confessional by the Episcopalians, and to renew our prayers for their conversion to that truth which at a distance proves so attractive to them. Yet there are dangers in regard to which the sincere ought to be forewarned, and serious evils to many souls may result from the incapacity of confessors who have never been trained for this most delicate and difficult work. It is in the spirit of Christian charity that we revert to these dangers.

In the first place, we hardly need say that no one but a duly authorized priest of the Catholic Church has the power to give absolution. As we are addressing chiefly those who believe in some ecclesiastical system, we have only to advert to the fact, that to such a power both orders and jurisdiction are necessary. The Episcopal Church does not admit the existence of this power, and the whole Christian world which does accept it, unites in the opinion that the Episcopalian clergy have no orders whatever, any more than the Methodists or Presbyterians. Any layman is as good a priest as the most distinguished Anglican minister. Such is the decision of the Catholic Church, and of every sect which has retained the apostolical succession. Is this decision of no consequence to the Ritualists who pretend to believe in authority and antiquity? But orders are not sufficient for the exercise of the power of absolution. Jurisdiction is also required, because they who believe in the priesthood must also believe that Christ has left this great office in order, and not in confusion. The bishop is the supreme pastor of his diocese, and no priest, without his permission, can validly either hear confessions or give absolution. This principle of jurisdiction is one which does not seem to penetrate the heads of High-Church Episcopalians; but if they will reflect for a moment, they will see its absolute necessity to the existence of the church. Suppose that valid orders are alone required to the exercise of the priesthood, and the communion of the faithful, and what is to prevent any priest from going off at any time, and carrying with him all the essentials of the church? Then there would be as many churches as there are dissenting priests.

No intelligent man would form a society on such principles, and surely our Lord Jesus Christ did not do so foolish a thing as found a church containing in itself the very seeds of self-destruction. We have heard that an excommunicated priest, who bears, to his sorrow, the ineffaceable character of priesthood, is willing to hear confessions since his apostasy. But though he has valid orders, he is no more able to give absolution than his associate ministers who have never been ordained, because he has no jurisdiction from Christ. What do these "Fathers" among the Episcopalians pretend? Do they ask jurisdiction from their own bishops, who, having none, have none to give? Or do they profess to have the whole Catholic Church in their own persons? If so, history has seen nothing so strange in all its curious record of ecclesiastical devices.

It is then a sad thing for a man to confess his sins and go through the humiliation of opening his whole life to another; and then receive no pardon for the sins he so anxiously confesses. We beg the attention of such earnest hearts to this point, and say to them, "If you really wish to confess, why not go at once where there is no doubt that Christ has left the power of forgiveness?"

Secondly, there is danger in the way and manner in which we are told that the Episcopalian ministers hear confessions. They ought, for their own sake, and for the sake of their penitents, to adopt the rules and safeguards which the experience of the church has thrown around so important a work. It is not prudent to hear the confessions of ladies in the minister's private room. The presence of a plain cross, or crucifix, does not remove the objection. It is too much of a burden to expect a lady to go through with all this unnecessary trial, especially when she has the additional conviction that she is doing something which she would not wish the world to know, or which she would not be willing to tell her husband or friends. The Catholic Church has wisely provided that the priest shall sit where he need neither see nor distinguish the penitent, and this is a safe rule to be imitated. The same objection arises to the method, said to be in vogue at St. Alban's, where the minister sits in the chancel, and the penitent kneels at his back. If there be others in the church, there is too much exposure, and if the church is locked, there is too much privacy. The Episcopalian clergy who become confessors ought to erect confessionals in their churches, and sit there at given hours publicly and openly.

We understand, also, that in some cases, at least, the penitent is obliged to write out his confession in full, and we consider this a dangerous and far too painful practice. We have been informed that Dr. Pusey wishes the general confessions which he hears to be written out carefully and left with him for his private study some days before the confession is made. We are certain that such a course has been sometimes imitated in this country, much to the disgust of ladies, who have even spoken to us of it. A sinner will do much, no doubt, in the fervor of penitence, but no such thing as this ought to be done. It is against the practice of the Catholic Church, and in violation of instinctive delicacy and propriety. No one is obliged to expose himself, even to obtain the pardon of sin.

Again, it is unfortunate for the Protestant clergy that they hear confession only by reason of their personal influence over their penitents; that they do not understand the nature of the seal of secrecy; and that they have no fixed system by which to direct their penitents. The same results follow, as if a doctor should essay to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith a dentist.

Personal influence is, no doubt, an instrument of much good; but when it alone or principally governs the relations of confessor and penitent, serious dangers may be imminent. Most of those who go to confession in the Episcopal Church are led to this step by reason of their confidence in the individual to whom they go, and through the attraction of his piety or zeal. They would hardly go to any one else, and if he were to die or be removed, they would be left without a director. It is not so much the priest to whom they unburden their conscience, as the favorite preacher whose good qualities have made strong impressions upon them. This is not a healthy state of things, and leads to sentimentality, which is often mistaken for piety. In the Catholic Church, the habit of confession is as universal as prayer, and the priestly character overshadows the individual. Among Protestants the contrary is notoriously true, and this difficulty in the way of the Protestant confessor can hardly be removed until he shall have brought about in his communion the state of feeling which is second nature to Catholics. This he can never do. He may lead individuals to the church; he cannot convert the whole body with which he is identified.

With the best intentions in the world, he does not and cannot understand the seal of secrecy which for ever closes the lips of the priest. He is disposed as a man of honor not to betray confidence, but experience teaches us that very few human secrets have been kept. He has not been taught the sacred nature of his obligation, nor the various ways by which he may expose his penitent, and as he has assumed an office to which his church did not call him, he stands or falls in human strength. No motive higher than that of honor binds him, and complicated as he is with the world, and generally with matrimonial relations, he really does not know how to act. The Catholic priest not only is bound by the fear of terrible sin, but is also aided by the system which surrounds him, in which he is trained and by that supernatural power which we know upholds the seven sacraments. He is not an individual resting upon his unaided powers, but the creature of his church, the agent and representative of a vast power which girdles the Christian world. Years of study and discipline have taught him the nature of his obligations, while he himself is as much bound to confess his sins as to hear the burden of other consciences. What an anomaly, for a man who never confesses his own faults, to undertake to listen to the accusations of others! If they need the confessional, much more does he need it. Is it not Pharisaical to bind burdens upon others, which we touch not with one of our fingers?

Let men say what they will, we believe, and from experience we know, that God upholds the confessor in his difficult task; that he gives him superhuman wisdom; that within the tribunal of penance a divine shield is over him to protect him against the weakness of humanity, that he may walk unharmed where otherwise angels would fear to tread. Here we pity the poor and isolated Ritualist, going forth upon a dangerous sea, in a frail bark, with no trust but the strength of his own arm. Cast out by his own church, and refusing communion with the great Catholic heart, how long will he stand the fury of the storm?

Finally, how shall he direct his penitents, and by what system form their spiritual character? Moral theology is an extensive and subtle science. The infallible church has given clear decisions upon all essential points of fact and morals, and her doctors, by years of patient labor and centuries of experience, have matured the colossal system which has such mighty influence over the religious heart. But what is all this to the Protestant confessor? He cannot avail himself of this without confessing the authority of the church; and if he begins with such a confession, where must he conscientiously guide his penitents? If he deny this authority, and by his own fallible wisdom choose the principles of his morality, in what respect is his opinion worth more than that of the humblest layman? Can there be a more pitiable spectacle, than that of a Protestant minister with St. Liguori as his guide in leading the souls of others? His spiritual life is surely made up of contradictions which must vex and perplex his conscience if he be an honest man. And will he not unavoidably make grievous mistakes, in the use of tools without experience, in the details of a work for which he has had no preparation?

Moreover, there are often decisions which have to be made, and in these he must either be a despot, or he must make equivocal answers. If a Catholic accuses himself of unbelief or doubt, the reply is easy; for God's revelation is, according to our faith, in and through an unerring church. If the Protestant falls into a like danger, how shall he find direction, since for him there is no infallible church? Must he not go on his weary way of investigation, and is not, by his principles, doubt his normal state? If a Catholic doubts the truth of any decision of his church, he commits a sin against his own creed; but since the Episcopal communion openly disclaims infallibility, how shall the Episcopalian confessor tell his penitent not to doubt his church which herself tells him he ought to doubt her? Then it comes to this, that he will either make him no reply, or rule him with a rod of iron, and bind him by his inflexible ipse dixit. What has been the result, in more cases than one, of this arbitrary despotism in the hands of individuals who neither by their own church, nor by any other, have the right to direct souls? Loss of the moral sense, failure to discern the first inspirations of faith, and, sometimes, insanity. We draw from the testimony of facts. It is bad enough to be under a civil despot, but it is worse to be under a religious autocrat. Then in the choice of penances we have heard of most frightful mistakes, where the good of the penitent was in no way consulted, but the vindication of the absolutism of the confessor. Think of a penance to blood for one lie, or for the great error of attending Mass in a Catholic Church. Think of penances which cover months and burden years with the chains of obligatory prayers and exercises. But all this is really nothing compared to the morbid and unhealthy religious life which they engender, in which slavish fear of God is the principal ingredient, where sighs and solemn faces, instead of cheerfulness and natural joyousness, are the exhibitions of their piety. To us, (and we have had occasion to know the interior of more than one,) they seem to be perpetually toiling up a steep ascent under the weight of heavy burdens from which it would be wrong to expect relief. Forced to confess their sins as if doing some stealthy action, they kill in their souls the bright light and, elasticity of spirit which the great Creator gave them. God is not a tyrant, but a merciful and beneficent father, whose smiles of love are ever around his children, and his priesthood are agents in the work of love to bring into even the erring heart the sunlight of a father's truth and mercy. The confessor is no minister of justice, but like his Master, the good Samaritan to bind up the wounds of the broken heart, to preach deliverance to the captive, and joy to the mourner.

In what we have said, we make no accusations against the good intentions of these Protestant confessors, for whom we especially pray. We believe that they mean well, and that they hope to sanctify their people by borrowing fruit from the garden of the church, and transplanting it where it cannot and will not grow. And as their only friends—for in their own communion they have few friends—we warn them of the risk they run, and of the dangers to which they expose their penitents. It is a fearful responsibility for them, for which they must answer alone, and in which no church will shield them. Some will, through their incapacity, lose their hold upon all religion, and either live without hope or die without consolation. Others will shut their eyes to the plainest deductions of reason, and having eyes, will see not, having ears, will hear not. Many through divine grace, and the honest heart which pursues principles to their legitimate results, will find their way to that one faith where all things are in harmony, where the aspirations of the soul are met with a full answer, and the needs of the heart are filled from God's own fulness. O children of men! how foolish it is to enter upon the province of God, and by human hands to make a religion, when the all-merciful Father, who alone knoweth our frame, has made one for us, which in its completeness answereth to every want of our being.

Sketches Drawn From The Life Of St. Paula,
By The Abbe Lagrange, Vicar-general Of Orleans.

In Three Chapters.

Chapter I.

"If all the members of my body should be changed into as many tongues, and should assume as many voices, I should still be unable to say enough of the virtues of the saintly and venerable Paula."

It is in these words of pious enthusiasm that St. Jerome, himself so holy a man, and accustomed to the guidance of so many noble souls, begins his biography of Paula, when, at the instance of her daughter, Eustochium, and to dry her tears, he undertook to record her mother's virtues.

Placing himself with awe in the presence of God and his angels, St. Jerome says: "I call to witness our Lord Jesus Christ and his saints, and the guardian angel of this incomparable woman, that what I say is simple truth, and that my words are unworthy of those virtues celebrated throughout the world, which have been the admiration of the church, and which the poor yet weep for. Noble by birth, more noble still by her holiness; powerful in her opulence, but more illustrious afterward in the poverty of Christ; of the race of the Scipios and of the Gracchi; heiress of Paulus Emilius, from whom she takes her name of Paula; direct descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, who was wife to the conqueror of Perseus, and mother of the second Scipio Africanus; she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and the humble roof of a poor dwelling to the gilded palaces of her ancestors."

Paula was born in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century, the 5th of May, of the year 347, in the reign of Constantius, and of Constans, the sons of Constantine, seven years after the death of the latter prince. Julius was then Pope at Rome. Paula belonged, through her mother, Blesilla, to one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Rome; and it seemed as if Providence wished to unite all earthly distinctions in this child, for the purest blood of Greece mingled in her veins with the noblest blood of Rome. At this time nothing was more common than alliances between the Roman and Greek families, as is proved by the Greek names which we find in the Roman genealogies. The father of Paula, Rogatus, was a Greek, and claimed royal descent from the kings of Mycaenas; and Agamemnon himself is said to have been his direct ancestor.

St. Jerome gives no further detail of the family of Paula, excepting that he mentions casually that their possessions were vast, including very important estates in Greece near Actium, besides their domain in Italy. "If," says St. Jerome, "I take note of her opulence and wealth, it is not that I attach importance to these temporal advantages, but in order to show that the glory of Paula in my eyes was not in having possessed them, but in having laid them at the feet of Jesus Christ."

A more real advantage of her birth was, that her noble family were Christians, although a portion of them still remained pagans. This intermingling of creeds must not surprise us; for the resistance to conversion was great, and throughout the fourth century it was a common thing to see worshippers of the true God and of Jupiter under the same roof.

Rome, in truth, presented then a great contrast. Christian Rome and pagan Rome stood face to face, and pagan Rome, as yet untouched by barbarians, still wore an imposing aspect. The Capitol still stood in pride, crowned with the statues and temples of the heathen gods. Opposite, on the Palatine, stood the ancient dwelling of the Caesars, with its marble porticoes; and at the foot of the two hills the old Forum surrounded with pagan temples. Further still, and separated from the Forum by the Sacred Way and the Amphitheatre of Flavius, rose the immense Colosseum; and at the other extremity the great circus and the aqueducts of Nero. On the borders of the Tiber was the mole of Adrian, the mausoleum of Augustus, with temples, theatres, baths, porticoes, etc., on every side; indeed, every monument of luxury and superstition, showing how deeply rooted paganism still was in the capital of the empire.

Nevertheless, by more than one sign it was easy to recognize that all this pagan grandeur was fast fading away before another power; and if polytheism still found strong support in old traditions and customs, institutions and monuments, it was the influence of the past, which was lessening every day. The future belonged to the church, and Christianity was daily gaining the upper hand. The pagan temples which were still standing were empty, the crowd now disdaining sacrifices. Silence and solitude reigned around the gods, while the new faith, spreading out its magnificence in broad daylight, covered Rome with superb basilicas. At the same time, Rome, deserted by the emperors for political reasons, which served the divine purpose, seemed given up to the majesty of pontifical rule; and the popes, brought out from the Catacombs and placed by Constantine in the imperial palace, already gave a foreshadowing to the world of the glory which should henceforth invest the Holy See.

At this time there sprang from the bosom of the church a soul who was destined to exercise a vast influence upon the religious orders throughout the universe.

The blood of the martyrs and early Christians had not been shed in vain. It was just at this epoch in the history of Christianity that Providence gave being to a child destined by her holiness to be one of the marvels of the age.

We have sufficient data to know what her education was and under what influences she grew up to womanhood. The old Roman spirit and the Christian spirit were both fitted to form a character of the highest order. Austere honor, severe self-respect, noble traditions of ancient customs, were early inculcated in the mind of Paula. She came of a race of whom St. Jerome said: "Remember that in your family a woman very rarely, if ever, contracts a second marriage." Besides the holy books which were her first studies, her reading was vast and extended, embracing both the literature of Greece and Rome. We shall see how in after-life this early culture developed in her the rich gifts of nature, establishing equilibrium between her intellect and her character.

Paula was brought up by her mother with that ardent love for the practice of her religion, which in all its perfection belonged especially to the days when persecution made these observances most precious to the early Christians. She followed Blesilla to the basilicas and to all feasts of the church, and also to visit the tombs of the martyrs and to the Catacombs. This last devotion was peculiarly dear to the Christians of the fourth century. They sought to glorify those victorious soldiers. "See," cried St. Chrysostom, "the tomb of the martyrs! The emperor himself lays down his crown there, and bends the knee."

There was not, perhaps, a family of Christians in Rome, which did not have some loved member among the glorious dead lying in the long galleries of the Catacombs. Saint Jerome speaks of the pious attraction of these sanctified asylums in the great city of the martyrs.

In this atmosphere of love for the church, and of faith in Christ and in the divine origin of Christianity, young Paula grew up. It was in those days the custom for the daughters of noble houses in Rome to marry young; and when Paula was fifteen years of age, her parents gave her in marriage to a young Greek whose name was Toxotius.

He belonged, on his mother's side, to the ancient family of the Julians, which boasted, as we know, of going back to the time of AEneas:

"Julius, à magno dimissum nomen Iülo."
Virgil's AEneid.

Toxotius did not have the faith of his bride. These mixed marriages were not rare in those days; witness Monica and Patricius, the parents of St. Augustine.

Christianity had tolerated such marriages from the beginning, in the hope that the infidel husband might be won by the wife to her belief. When, robed in a white tunic of the finest wool, according to custom, her brow covered with the flammcum, Paula laid her trembling hand in that of Toxotius, who can tell with what holy emotion, what elevation of thought, what purity of feeling and of hope, her soul was filled! On the other hand, Toxotius does not seem to have been unworthy of his Christian bride, and the uncommon affection Paula bore him ever afterward, her inconsolable grief for his loss, all proves that their marriage was among those which the world calls happy. God blessed this union. Four daughters were successively born to them.

The eldest, called Blesilla after her grandmother, seemed gifted with a vivacious and most interesting character; her health was delicate, but her full, rich nature gave early promise of that rare beauty of mind and soul, which developed perfectly in after-years to the joy of Paula.

Paulina, the second, had also a fine nature, but the very opposite of Blesilla's. Her light was not like her sister's, a shining flame; but with less brilliancy of wit, and less vivacity of character, she possessed great good sense and solid judgment, giving promise of being as strong in character as her sister was brilliant.

As for the third of these young girls, called by the graceful name of Eustochium, borrowed from the Greek, and meaning rectitude or rule, she was a gentle child, modest, reserved, timid. One would say she was like a flower hiding within herself her own perfume; but this perfume was sweet, and on a nearer view one could not avoid seeing in this young soul all the treasures which would one day flower and bloom. It is difficult to picture to ourselves Rufina. She appears but once in the history of her mother, at the moment of the departure of Paula for the east, sad, bathed in tears, and yet silent and resigned; stamped, even in childhood, with that painful charm which belongs particularly to those beings not destined by providence to mature, but to fall away and die young.

Paula's married life was passed in the midst of all the magnificence which marked the decline and fall of the empire. She passed through the streets of Rome, as did the other patrician ladies, in a gilded litter, carried by slaves. She would have feared to put her dainty feet on the earth, or to touch the mud of the streets. The weight of a silk dress was almost too much for one so sensitive to carry; and had a ray of sunshine intruded into her litter, it would have seemed to her a fire.

"Et solis calor incendium," etc., etc.
Epist. ad Pammachium.

In those days she used rouge and cereum, like other women of her rank; she passed much of her time at the bath, which consumed so great a part of life in Rome; she spent the winter, according to usual custom, at Rome, and the summer in some villa in the country, passing her time most agreeably between her books and a chosen circle of friends.

In the midst of all this luxury, leading a life far removed from the virtues which she practised later, Paula was yet known and respected as a woman of great dignity of character and irreproachable conduct. And if, during these happy years, the young wife of Toxotius did not always sufficiently bear in mind the maxim of the apostle, which teaches us to use the things of this world, without giving them our affections inordinately; if she tasted too freely of its pleasures and dangerous vanities, in the trials which she was soon to encounter, there was compensation to be made for this self-indulgence, and, in her austere penance, a super-abundant expiation. Saint Jerome tells us that Paula had none of the barbaric arrogance common to the Roman women—that which made them purse-proud, cruel to their slaves, passionate, and impatient, which Juvenal describes so admirably in his imperishable satires. In Paula all these bad passions gave place to gentleness, softness, goodness. "This wealthy daughter of the Scipios," says St. Jerome, "was the gentlest and the most benevolent of women—to little children, to plebeians, and with her own slaves. She possessed that excelling goodness, without which noble birth and beauty are worthless, and which is especially characteristic of a lofty nature. This sweetness of mind, combined with her austere sense of honor, were the two features of her soul which, by their contrast, made her countenance most charming.

It is easy to conceive how such a woman performed the delicate social duties that devolved upon her. Her associations were of two kinds. She was intimate with all the celebrated women in the church, such as Manilla and Titiana; at the same time the pagan relations of Toxotius all loved her, and she received them frequently at her house, bearing in mind the duty of the Christian woman to let them see her religion in such a light as would lead them to respect and honor it. And so it was that, by her fireside, Paula was the happiest of wives and of mothers. Her young family grew up joyously around her, filling her with bright hopes for the future.

She had long wished to give her husband a son and heir. Her prayer was answered; and she gave birth to a son, her last child, who received the name of Toxotius, after his father.

This is all that history tells us of the first phase in the life of Paula. We see her thus with every happiness at once, "the pride," says St. Jerome, "of her husband, of her family, and of all Rome."

We know no more of her life up to the age of thirty. The Paula of history, the saint whom God was to give as an example to souls, is not the woman of the world, nor the happy woman; she is the woman struck as if by lightning, blasted in her happiness; and from this trial rising up generously, and by a great flight soaring far above common virtues and the ordinary condition of pious souls, up to those heroic acts which only emanate from great sorrows. It would seem as if God had been pleased to accumulate upon her, for thirty years, all the felicity of earth—to adorn, as it were, this victim of his love, and to make us comprehend the better by the subsequent destruction of this, how vain is earthly happiness.

It is here that the historian takes hold of Paula, and that the veil is lifted from her. Now begins her true history, the history of her soul.

Paula was only thirty-one years of age when Toxotius died and she became a widow. The blow to her was terrible. In the first moments of her grief she was completely stunned and powerless. It was feared by her friends that she would not long survive the shock. Nothing could stop her tears. She could not be comforted. From day to day the void was growing deeper and deeper into her heart.

There is a decisive turning-point in the life of every one, on which the future depends. This moment had now come for Paula. Two ways lay open before her—the world on one side, God on the other. She determined, in her sorrow, to give up the world, to lead for ever afterward the life of a Christian widow, and to seek for consolation in this resolution.

After the first outburst of grief, when she came to herself, her decision was irrevocably made. Human things were never more to regain the hold they had had over her up till now. She understood what God wanted of her; namely, "to accept the sacrifice and change her whole life." So, as St. Francis de Sales tells us, "the heart of a widow who could not give herself all to God during the lifetime of her husband, flies in search of celestial perfumes, when he has been taken from her."

Paula was surrounded with many noble examples. Marcella lived in her palace on Mount Aventine, where she had gathered together a band of widows and virgins from amongst the noblest families of Rome, who gave great edification by their virtue and charity. How and for what purpose had Providence permitted this community to be formed, which gave such an impetus to the religious life? It is necessary that we should answer in some detail, for this is the key to the whole life of Paula.

The church, resting from the earlier persecutions, which inflamed zeal and devotion, was now in great peril from the growing influence of security and wealth, in spreading a pagan and Roman love of indolence and indifference. The empire was declining, and its moral fall was hastened by political troubles. The degenerate Romans consoled themselves for their abasement, by the melancholy enjoyments of luxury and vice. Luxury and debauchery were already creeping into the Christian lines, thus attacking the most vital parts of the church. False widows and virgins no longer scrupled to show light conduct beneath the veil. There must be a remedy found equal to the evil. God failed not to bring succor to his church, and the spirit of holiness became all the more manifest in her faithful children, in proportion as the peril was great.

The reaction commenced in the east, with the great monastic foundations, which rose up in opposition to the world, performing prodigies in the way of austerities and moral improvement. At Rome, strange to say, the reform began where it was least to have been expected, namely, in the midst of the patricians. The signal was given by women. They threw themselves with ardor into the heroic path, and soon their husbands followed them. This regeneration was one of the most memorable in history, as well as in the annals of the church. It was started by St. Athanasius, who brought it with him from the east. Thrice exiled by Arian persecution, the great patriarch three times sought refuge in Rome. He had brought with him the revelation of the wonders realized by the fathers in the deserts of Egypt and on the banks of the Nile. His biography of the great Anthony took hold of every imagination, and gave new zeal to monastic life. Athanasius had passed seven years in the Theban deserts; he had known Anthony, Ricomius, and Hilarius, and told of the astounding graces of their supernatural life.

In one of these journeys of Athanasius to Rome, a noble Christian widow, named Albina, had the honor of receiving him as her guest. Albina had a daughter, Marcella, on whose noble soul the conversation of the great bishop made an extraordinary impression. Seated at his feet, the young girl drank in every word that fell from his lips. Some months after, out of deference to her mother's wishes, Marcella consented to marry; but when, at the end of seven months, she became a widow and was free, she made up her mind never to contract a second marriage, but to devote herself in Rome to the humble imitation of those virtues which Athanasius had taught her to venerate and admire. Nevertheless, her youth, her wit and great beauty drew around her many admirers. Amongst others was Cerealio, of high birth and large fortune. "I will be more her father than her husband," said he to Albina, who greatly desired the marriage, "I will leave her all my wealth, being already advanced in years." But Marcella was inflexible. "If I wished to marry again," said she to her mother, "I would marry a husband, and not an inheritance."

Cerealio was refused, and this discouraged all other suitors.

Marcella now gave up the world and made a desert of her magnificent palace. There she lived austerely, doing good works. She bid farewell to jewels, and even laid aside the seal ring always worn by the patrician women; and rising above their prejudice against the religious state, and particularly the coarse garb of the monks, she was the first who dared to assume the abased dress, and publicly imitated what St. Athanasius had taught her to believe good in the sight of God. The example soon became contagious, giving her many followers, who astonished Rome by their austerities and penances.

There was also at Rome, at this time, a young patrician lady whose name was Melanie. Suddenly, when only twenty-two, she lost her husband and two children, and laid them in one tomb on the same day. Accepting this dispensation of the divine will, Melanie resolved to devote her whole life to the shining virtues of which Marcella was so bright an example. To increase her faith further, she started on a pious pilgrimage to the east, where Athanasius still lived. She saw him at Alexandria shortly before his death. After having visited the monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Land, Melanie was unwilling to return to Rome and its corruptions. She therefore founded for herself a monastery on the Mount of Olives, where she lived an austere and good life.

This example still further inflamed the souls of the Roman women, and numberless were those now in search of perfection; some remaining at home in their own houses, like the virgins and widows of the first centuries; others preferring to congregate together, and, without any fixed rule, make the trial of community life. The centre of all this movement was Marcella, who possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of attracting others to her. She was truly the standard-bearer of this noble band, of whose hearts grace had taken possession. The venerable Albina was like the revered ancestress of the little community formed on Mount Aventine. The most prominent of those who joined Marcella were Sophronia, Felicitas, and Marcellina. The latter was daughter of an ancient governor of the Gauls. Outside of Marcella's house, the names best known among those who had devoted themselves to a life of austerity and virtue, were Lea, a holy widow whom the church has canonized; the admirable Asella, and Fabiola, who was of the ancient family of Fabius. All this movement toward religious life was greatly encouraged by the pious pontiff who then filled St. Peter's chair. At the time Paula became a widow. Pope Damasus was nearly seventy-five years of age. He was one of the noblest of the early popes, and one of those who did most for Christianity and for the development of Christian piety. He had a sister named Irene, who, consecrating herself to God, died at the age of twenty, in honor of whom he composed a most touching epitaph.

Such was the group of souls and the array of virtue which Paula had around her, and which attracted her, when she became a widow, to seek a more perfect life.

In the words of St. Jerome, Marcella, like an incendiary, blew upon these lighted cinders and set them in a blaze. She found words to bid those eyes, so dimmed by tears, to turn to heaven; and she urged that bruised spirit to rise up and seek God. All this Marcella did with a sister's tenderness. Her solicitude extended to the children of her friend, and she begged that Eustochium, who already showed a predilection for the religious life, might be confided to her care. Paula acceded to this wish with joy, keeping with her Blesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and Toxotius. Then she began with ardor and faith the new life she had marked out for herself, and she soon outshone all others in virtue. There was a sudden and admirable expansion of greatness in her soul. With her this rupture with the world was but a higher flight toward God.

Her first step in advance was a new and great love of prayer; for so it is, that the more the heart is closed to earth, the more it opens to heaven. Her love of God and of celestial things grew stronger each day. She lived most austerely, practising every Christian mortification. All the habits of luxury of other days were thrown aside, and the very comforts of life diminished. She slept on the bare floor, and rivalled in abstinence and fast the ascetics of the desert. She often wept over the thought of the self-indulgence of her former worldly life. These tears, together with those which she shed for her husband, Toxotius, flowed so constantly and so abundantly, that her eyes were injured, and her sight endangered. Paula was the pale one, pale with fasting and almost blinded by tears.

Paula's heart was inflamed with charity. She found in the poor another outlet of love for an ardent nature; and as she surpassed Marcella and all others in austerities, so she also surpassed them in charities. All her income was given in alms, and "never," says St. Jerome, "did a beggar come away from her empty-handed."

It was now two years since Paula had lived in this holy way, when great news reached the little community of Aventine. In 382, Pope Damasus called to Rome the Catholic bishops in council, and many venerable bishops were expected there from the east. The object of the council was to decide several questions of faith, as well as to put an end to the long pending schism of Antioch. A few bishops only answered the call of the Roman pontiff, the greater part excusing themselves in a letter which is celebrated in ecclesiastical history. Among those who came were Paulinus, one of the bishops of Antioch, and St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamina in the island of Cyprus.

It is easy to imagine the emotion produced among these recluses by the arrival in Rome of such personages as these holy bishops, who came from the mysterious east where the Catholic faith had been cradled. They had seen Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they knew the fathers of the desert, whose fame filled the world. What lessons of wisdom would they not be able to gather from such visitors!

Paula obtained from Pope Damasus the honor of having St. Epiphanius as her guest, and it was in her daily interviews with him, as well as with Paulinus, that the desire to see the east, which she was one day to realize, first sprung up in her mind.

History has preserved few details of this council of the year 382. The great work to be brought about by these eastern bishops at Rome was the new impetus which their presence was to give to religion among the Christians of Rome already in the way of life and truth. There came from the east, in company with the holy bishops, a man destined to exercise great influence over the future life of Paula and her friends. This man was St. Jerome. We must pause a moment and not pass by one who is perhaps the most striking, the most original, and the grandest figure of the fourth century. He stands alone in his strength—different from St. Hilarius of Poitiers, the profound theologian; from Ambrose, the sweet orator; from Augustine, the great philosopher, or Paulinus, the Christian poet. His features are marked and stern, his character is austere and ardent; the burning reflection from an eastern sky rests upon him; he is laden with the learning of the Christian and the pagan world; the indefatigable athlete of the church, he whose powerful voice moved the old world when they listened to his pathetic lament over the fall of Rome, and which moves us still when we read it now after the lapse of centuries!

Such was Jerome; yet is this picture incomplete, for we have not mentioned his special gift for the direction of souls. He was their guide, their father. He it was who began this divine guidance, entrusted afterward to St. Bernard, and by him to St. Francis de Sales, from St. Francis de Sales to Bossuet and Fénélon, and so on down to our own times. It is this special gift which gives him so prominent a part in the history of Paula.

Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say, when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet, that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."

After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks, sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.

He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.

Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine, among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later, with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.

This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.

"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry had already found assistance before hers."

This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan families.

To Be Continued.

Bound With Paul.

The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to the prison. "'O caro Duca mio,' is there an inscription over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and will not let it go."

Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For education had emphasized the difference which nature had pronounced between these two—a difference which William Blake has defined in a word: the man looked with his eyes, the woman looked through hers.

Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied. The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them—an Acheron, in which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached, unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives. Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain, their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.

"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm. "Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty; his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name, and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors. When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his, Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it, he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called the church some ugly name or other, then he knew that it was a sin for him to listen. I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe. But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."

The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she said.

At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers. The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold, whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors, each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell. The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar against which it rested—a dogged hand. "You think that the dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.

The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."

"No!"

"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."

The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by him.

The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall, thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and rather small. Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so good, he would not have been so bad.

This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid, the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes fixed—locked, rather than lost in thought.

He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for her to speak.

After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the decision must be the same in both cases."

He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a church than a barnacle is a ship."

"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go. You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."

She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was unmoved.

"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."

This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened, and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.

"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said. "You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own thoughts and say your own prayers."

As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth open. But at length he spoke.

"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition—obedience in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."

He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.

Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings, her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition; it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated, and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place, and too precious to be willingly relinquished,

"The days must seem long to you," she said.

She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be drunkard, and this put a stop to it."

As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes began to kindle.

"Have you a family?" the lady asked.

He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked down again. "There's Larry," he said.

"And who is Larry?"

The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And, indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am," he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then, and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't. Shame never touched one of us at home."

"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string. For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a tether."

"He must have been a great care," she said.

"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.

"No."

"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist. Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best, as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her know the next day. That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would. And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man, whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."

The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its rock.

"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came here," he said.

"Who is Mary?"

"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.

"You hear from them?"

"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will send me the money."

The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."

He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see, ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."

"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."

"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly, his eyes beginning again to kindle.

"What do you mean?"

He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.

Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."

"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy; but by and by I got reconciled. You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening. The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me, and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight. It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart, that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"

"How probable that would sound if it were related as having happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of the speaker.

"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at highway robbery. How did it happen?"

Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself, she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her. Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict concluded, giving a short laugh.

"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."

"I shall not go," he replied.

She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old way?" the speaker had asked.

"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Those bizarre, uncompromising virtues of the antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not offend against les bienséances, though all the saints should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to your moutons, and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"

To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.

A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison, and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened it, and called Dougherty.

Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.

"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."

"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet way; "but I can't go to chapel."

"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.

"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.

"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison are children of the devil!" she said.

"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is right."

"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."

Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work again after three days, that being the longest time the rules allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.

Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said. "I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service. At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the sick, and that troublesome protégé of hers. "I won't go near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.

Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan. Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings" was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up, while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the first sign of submission or of fainting.

The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down his face.

"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the deputy.

"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"

Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.

The moans became fainter.

"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your grit, and that is enough."

"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.

"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.

"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.

"No, madam; he has fainted."

They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair by the open window.

"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr. Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.

"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't it?"

"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's sleeve.

He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with difficulty.

"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"

He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon the cross will strengthen me."

"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.

"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor advice from me. Go your own way."

Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.

"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he likes."

"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a free man."

Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till he gets shut up in a place like this."

"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you have suffered teach you to resist temptation."

The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself.

"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't believe you would be dishonest when sober."

The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.

The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.

But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck, wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed how he had been consumed inwardly.

It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine, and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned, there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor, and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one forgot it was but a whisper.

"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently. "I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."

A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.

"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to choose."

He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.

Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"

"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"

"You want me to write to him?"

"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously in the lady's face.

"I won't forget," she said.

He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked Larry best."

The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."

"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives to all."

The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man. Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent, who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.

"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.

The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich! It is for him to pity us."

She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor. "Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I hate to disturb a man who is dying."

The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much more. How does his brother appear?"

"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should have become quiet."

"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.

The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and very well dressed."

The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be admitted without delay."

She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine; and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."

"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow morning if he behaves himself."

Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you, ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."

"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to you?"

He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand—a note which, in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated her to take up to his brother.

"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward her.

"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.

Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he asked tremulously.

"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."

Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note, looked at the man who lay there dying before her.

He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.

She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for me, going to prison for my crime."

The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't know what he was writing!"

She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on hers, a deathly pallor in his face.

"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.

"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.

He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do, and have just about finished?"

It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.

"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand. I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."

He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his strength.

"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a spoonful of cordial.

But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here. He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides, Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not guilty;' and it was true."

She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them, then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.

He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You promise?"

"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did you know it?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow morning."

"Yes!"

Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet, breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises with an iron grasp.

That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a love that was entirely human?

"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God. Perhaps you loved your brother too well."

"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."

"Do not be too sure," she said.

"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how; and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman; and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I would scorn to do?"

"Are you not afraid of presumption?"

"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."

"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.

"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.

While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the dawn. As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer, lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.

"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in chains? I would rather have been Peter!"

Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles.

The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.

Childhood and the grave! Should these two words be placed together? Must flowers fall before bearing fruit, and children also die? This is what mothers think, and the church thinks as they do, because the church is a mother. In her view children do not die; they are born again, they are transfigured; and the grave in which cold death places them resembles the white bed, whereon, perhaps the day before, you saw them open their eyes to the sunlight. Do you recollect the ode in which a poet, at the time eminent, celebrated in beautiful verses the entrance of Louis XVII. into the heavenly palace to which his father had gone by the rough road of martyrdom? According to Catholic belief, all those little beings who die before making a name or obtaining a place in this world, are also young princes, heirs-apparent of a kingdom more beautiful than that of France, and who, like Louis XVII., fall asleep in a prison to awake upon a throne.

This is why the church has no prayers of grief at their burial. Assured of their happiness, she laments not, but gives praise. By the grace given at baptism, they are received into glory. She covers their remains with white drapery, which calls to mind the vestment which she put over them at the baptismal font. Instead of mourning, she invites the children of heaven to unite in praises, Laudate, pueri! The Virgin, who was herself a mother, receives them at her altar, where the triumphant procession congratulates the Queen of angels that her empire is enriched by one more subject—Ave, Regina caelorum! Ave, Domina angelorum! The funeral mass for little children is only a thanksgiving to God, who has reserved a favored space for those blessed beings, Venite, benedicti Patris. Having read the gospel of our Lord, who blessed and caressed those to whom he promised the kingdom of heaven, the last prayer of the church which throws a little earth upon the body that is to rise again, is that we, adult sinners, may one day rejoice with them in the same kingdom. Read again this funeral service, and if you have a mourning mother among your friends and relatives, (who does not know one?) give her these consolations. She will believe that she hears the voice of God, who stopped the coffin of the widow's only son and restored him to her.

But these are, if I may speak thus, only the first caresses of religion of the remains of children; the honor which she accords to them is perpetuated in the worship with which she surrounds their graves.

Paganism took little care of the tombs of those who had not furnished to their country a citizen or a soldier. We know that they considered a child's life very unimportant. Virgil alone, among the poets, uttered a cry for the souls of young infants, whom he represents as being cut down before the eyes of their mothers. In those family sepulchres, called by the Romans columbaria, I found several little busts in marble, representing children, by the side of which were funeral urns, containing at the bottom several pinches of ashes. This was all that remained. Among the innumerable inscriptions which cover the walls of the immense gallery of the Vatican, I saw several epitaphs coldly stating that Junius Severianus had lived two years; that Octavius Liberalis died when he was five years four months and four days old; that Steteria Superba had departed life at the age of eighteen months. But there was no wish or hope of meeting them again, and no religious emblem to console the mourners.

Elysium did not exist for those shades without a name, as they were called, sine nomine manes, and their sepulchre closed without hope and without glory. The position of children in heathen times was revealed to me by an epitaph which I found at Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, to which the fashionable Romans came to enjoy the fine coast and a sunny sky. A stone detached from the ruins of a theatre, now almost entirely destroyed by the action of the weather and the sea, had the following inscription: "To the divine shades of Septentrion, a child of twelve years, who danced two days in the theatre and pleased the people"! [Footnote 83] They made the poor slave-boy contribute for two days to their delight; but he was overcome, and they applauded— saltavit et placuit. See, then, what society made of this child—a plaything and a victim! Meditating upon this, I recalled to mind the time when another infant of twelve years of age glorified God in the temple at Jerusalem, and also when the Saviour took the hand of the dying girl and saying unto her, "Arise!" restored her to her father. I was obliged to leave these cursed ruins and enter for a moment into the temple of that God who, to save these little ones, took upon himself the form of a child—Custodiens parvulos Dominus.

[Footnote 83: "Diis Manibus pueri Septentrionis, annorum duodecim, qui biduo saltavit in theatro et placuit."]

II.

Jesus Christ was born, was an infant; and since that time a revolution in favor of children began, which is perceptible in the epitaphs upon their graves. The child becomes a king, almost a god. It is at least a soul called to heaven and expecting us; and what new regards surround it for the future in that lapidary style, which says so much in so few words.

I was at Avignon, and visiting the museum of that city, my attention was attracted to a grave-stone of one of the first Christian centuries. It contained the following words: "Florentiola, pax tecum!" Florentiola, peace be with thee!" By the side was the monogram of Christ, surrounded with glory. Who was this little Florentiola? The tender diminutive proved plainly that she was an infant, and a beloved one. The wish expressed and the sign of Christ the Redeemer gave evidence that she was also a Christian. This little name brought to mind another inscription which I found somewhere in one of our cemeteries, upon the sepulchre of a young woman: "She bloomed, blossomed, and died." Of these three periods of life, Florentiola had passed through only the first; but the last words expressed the hope that, as she had given to this world the blossom, she would yield the fruit in another: "Pax tecum!"

But one must go to the catacombs in Rome, and read, in that great Christian city of death, the delicacies of the affections of earth, and the hopes of a resurrection, which are radiant upon the graves of little children. In the cemetery of St. Priscilla, I observed two epitaphs distinguished above all others by their brevity. One of them consists only of a single melancholy word, "Libera" that is to say, free. A dove flying away, carrying an olive-branch, explains the meaning, which to me appeared sublime.

This captive soul which had passed through the prison of earth was free at last! The church conveys a similar idea at the funeral obsequies of little children: "Anima nostra, sicut passer, erepta est de laqueo venantium. Laqueus contritus est, et nos liberati sumus." (Psalm cxxiii.) "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we are delivered."

The other one, which I remarked at the same place, containing only a word, was quite as beautiful and more Christian—"Redempta," redeemed. This was also expressive of liberty, but it was a freedom which had been acquired as the price of a ransom which was the blood of God: Redempta!

This last expression alludes to the grace given by baptism, which liberates the soul held in bondage by the demon. The children's epitaphs have it often, and prove that the church had conferred the sacraments upon them at the most tender age. You can find for instance, in the museum of the Lateran: "Paulina, neophyte of eight years; Candida, neophyte, twenty-one months old; Zozima, neophyte, five years, eight months, and thirteen days; Matronata Matrona, neophyte, one year, fifty-two days."

Upon a grave in the catacomb of Saint Calista, a Grecian inscription was found by the Canon Profili, consisting of the following words:

"Dionysius, newly illuminated, one year and four months." This title of enlightened was given only to those who came into possession of it by baptism. Saint Chrysostom mentions the enlightened in no other way.

This one, collected in the cemetery of the new road Salaria, and preserved at the Lateran, is more explicit:

"Florentius dedicates this inscription to his well-beloved son, Apronianus, who lived one year, nine months, five days. He was loved by his grand-mother, and seeing that he was nigh unto death, she asked the church to make him a Christian before he should leave the world." [Footnote 84]

[Footnote 84: "Florentius filio suo Aproniano fecit titulum benemerenti qui vixit annum et menses novem, dies quinque. Cum amatus fuisset à majore suâ et vidit hunc morti constitutum esse, petivit de ecclesiâ ut fidelis de seculo recessisset."]

Baptism, which was conferred upon the newly-born, was a great consolation to those who witnessed their departure from this world. "O Magus, innocent child!" said an inscription at the museum of the Lateran, "thou hast gone to live among the guiltless. How much more endurable is life! With what joy the church, thy other mother, received thee, when thou didst leave the world for her. We will suppress the murmurings of our hearts and restrain the tears from our eyes." [Footnote 85]

[Footnote 85: "Magus puer innocens, esse jam inter innocentes coepisti. Quàm staviles (stabilis) tivi (tibi) haec vita est! Quàm te laetum excipet (excepit) mater ecclesia edeoc (de hoc) mundo revertentem. Comprimatur pectorum gemitus, struatur (destruatur) fletus oculorum."]

Expressions of the most ingenious tenderness are shown in the last farewell to creatures of whom only smiles are known.

"Cyricus, dear soul, peace be with thee! He lived a year and sixty-two days!" [Footnote 86]

[Footnote 86: Cyricus, anima dulcis in pace, vixit annum i. dies lxii.]

"Here reposes our dear soul, named Quiriace, an innocent child, beautiful and good, who lived three years, three months, eight days." [Footnote 87]

[Footnote 87: Hic posita est anima dulcis, innoca sapiens et pulcra, nomine Quiriace, quae vixit annos iii. menses iii. dies viii.]

The word soul, in the Latin language, is a term of great tenderness. It signifies life as it is visible. But in the Christian language it has a more spiritual signification. As the poet says:

"Thou callest me thy life; call me thy soul!
I wish a name more lasting than a day.
Life is of little value, a breath extinguishes the flame;
But the soul is immortal as our love."

Maternal affection creates, in Christianity, a name for children which becomes as the family name for those beings who pass from earth, having only glanced at its sorrows. The mother remembers that the Lord said, the angels of these little ones behold the face of the Father who is in heaven. This was enough to make so many angels of those innocent babes by an intentional confusion. This is hereafter to be their title: and where is now the afflicted mother who, at the death-bed of her son, has not seen, like the poet, the radiant face of the angel bending over and calling the child who resembles him? Primitive epigraphy goes to show the cause of this synonymy upon the graves of children.

"Angelica, bene in pace." "Angelica, child, be happy in peace," was one inscription of the Catacombs.

Upon another was written:

"Laurentius to his beloved son Severus, who lived four years, eight months, and five days, and was called by the angels on the 7th of January." [Footnote 88]

[Footnote 88: "Severo filio dulcissimo Laurentius pater benemerenti qui vixit annos iv. menses viii. dies v. accersitus ab angelis, vii. idus Januarii."]

One is pleased to recognize in these funereal places, the remembrances of school days, being the only ones that the departed youths have left in life. In several catacombs, near the Cubicula, where the faithful ones assembled for prayer, large halls can be seen, which have neither altar nor pictures, and no other embellishment than banks made in the turf, mostly terminated by one or two elevated seats. It is presumed that the antiquarians assembled children in school, and instructed them in the catechism. Near one of these halls can be read the following epitaph in the catacomb of Saint Priscilla:

"Obrimos to Palladios, his beloved cousin and schoolmate, as a remembrance."

In the catacomb of the new Via Salaria the school-teacher united with the mother to write an epitaph upon his pupil, whom he had adopted in his heart.

"With a holy and pure spirit, this grave has been made to Florentius, a child of thirteen years, by Coritus, his teacher, who loved him more than a son, and by Corda, his mother." [Footnote 89]

[Footnote 89: "In spiritu sancto bono, Florentio qui vixit annis xiii. Coritus magister qui plus amavit quam proprium filium, et Cordeus mater filio benemerenti fecerunt.']

The glass paintings found at the same place are a finished representation of the education of young Christians in those days. On a chalice made of glass there is a child, whom the father and mother are teaching to read the Scriptures. Another one represents two little children, Pompeianus and Theodora, with their parents, under the trees. They are holding a copy of the Gospel, and Pompeianus points to the monogram of Christ which is erected in the midst of this Christian family. Their father is discoursing and explaining to them the precepts of their faith.

But once torn from the bosom of their family, who received children into the world of souls, which they entered astonished? The epitaphs recommend them to the saints in heaven to attend them on their entrance into paradise. The mother of Aurelius Gemellus, who died at the age of eight years, added to the inscription engraved upon his tombstone the following: "O Saint Basilla! we recommend to you the innocence of Gemellus!" [Footnote 90] In former times this was to be found in the cemetery of Saint Basilla, now of Saint Hermes.

[Footnote 90: "Commendo Basilla, innocentiam Gemelli."]

A similar prayer was addressed to this saint in the same catacomb, but for another child: "O Saint Basilla! we commend to thy care Crescentinus, and our daughter Crescentia, who lived ten months." [Footnote 91]

[Footnote 91: Domina Basilla, commendamus tibi Crescentinum et filiam nostram ... quae vixit menses x." ...]

More frequently it was to God they directed the loved soul, "Lord Jesus, remember our child," said a Grecian inscription reported by Northcote.

Is there not a remembrance of the stammering of a child in prayer, in the first pronunciation, and in the orthography of the last word of the epitaph on a little girl?

"Regina, bibas (vivas) in Domino Zezu!" "Regina, live in the Lord Jesus!"

If life is only a pilgrimage for us, is not this particularly true of those who have only passed a few days in this world? This idea has been rendered in the epitaph of a young Christian; and few have made so great an impression upon me as the following, simple and short as it is:

"Peregrina, vixit annos viii., menses viii., dies x. Decessit de corpore." "Peregrina lived eight years, eight months, ten days, then departed from the body."

Did this name of Peregrina, pilgrim, passenger, allude to her rapid voyage upon the earth, which she hastened to leave? I incline to this beautiful idea, which a similar inscription authorizes, not far from there, carved upon the tomb of a Christian: "Viator!"

Upon the grave-stones of children of the first centuries, it is not uncommon to see a white dove, carved upon an antique cup, drinking from the border. Those who repose beneath that stone had drunk of the cup of life, and taking a taste, not wishing more, had spread their wings and returned to heaven.

In that better land they become intercessors for their kindred on the earth. What family has not theirs? And who has not prayed to those young elect, yesterday our brothers and sons, to-day our defenders in that place from which they behold us and will prove their love for us? The following can be read in the Lateran Museum:

"Matronata matrona, intercede for thy parents!
She lived one year, fifty-two days." [Footnote 92]

[Footnote 92: "Pete pro parentes tuos, Matronata Matrona, quae vixit an. i. di lii."]

And upon another stone:

"Anatolius has made this grave for his dear son, who lived seven years, seven months, twenty-two days. May the soul repose in happiness with God. Pray for thy sister!" [Footnote 93]

[Footnote 93: "Anatolius filio benemerenti fecit, qui vixit annis vii. mensis vii. diebus xxii. Spiritus tuus bene requiescat in Deo. Petas pro sorore tua."]

III.

I must confess that we have preserved little of the architectural simplicity in the inscriptions upon tombs. It is just to say that they are of a poor style, laden with lengthy common epitaphs, emphatic declamations, and warm protestations, contradicted by the neglected and solitary aspect of those almost forgotten places. I make an exception of the sepulchres of children. If you find in a cemetery a grave which is preserved with love, invested with crowns, and dressed with fresh flowers, you can recognize the place of a child. In all countries of the world, a delicate worship is devoted to the mortal remains of innocence. The Indian graves have become celebrated, since Chateaubriand described them so charmingly. Now that Christianity has been established in those parts of the globe, mothers no longer suspend the cradles of their sons upon branches of trees, but their funerals have retained much of the simple grace of the time of Chactas.

A missionary has written: "I had to attend the burial of a little child five or six months old. They brought it to the church, laying it upon a mat, with garlands of flowers for a winding-sheet. We should have thought that it was sleeping sweetly, and notwithstanding its color, I admired its angelic beauty. After the prayers, which the church addresses to the good God, they dropped it gently into the grave, as if it had been its cradle, without covering even the face. Flowers were given in the place of earth, to throw upon the body. All the assistants did likewise, and some commenced to weep. It was sad to see the earth close over this little body so sweetly adorned, and cover that young face which appeared to smile upon us. It was to become food for worms; but the beautiful soul was already in heaven with the angels. I then united with the heavenly spirits to sing praises to God at the happiness of his little creature. I hope that this child will not forget the young missionary who celebrated its deliverance from this world of misery." [Footnote 94]

[Footnote 94: Vie de M. l'Abbé Chopart, p. 188.]

This scene recalls to me a similar one which I witnessed in the village of Beauvoisis. I met in the street the funeral procession of a little girl who was being carried to the cemetery. In advance of the coffin, a child of ten years, concealed under a floating drapery, was carrying a basket of white flowers. Thus she walked, gathering and smiling, happy with her part, until their arrival at the sepulchre; then throwing her basket into the grave, she disappeared among the trees, delighted at having prepared this flowery bed for her playmate, who was to sleep there the long night of death.

Menander said in a celebrated verse, "He whom the gods love dies young." And Sophocles said before him, "It is good not to be born; but if once born, the second degree of happiness is to die young." The ancients considered it fortune to be delivered from mortal misery. What would they have said if those who left them had appeared upon the bosom of God in a beatitude and glory without end? Bene in pace!

Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople.
[Footnote 95]

[Footnote 95: Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. By Emeline Lott. 4th edition. 12mo, pp. 312. Richard Bentley. New Burlington Street, London. 1867.]

This volume has run through several editions in England within the last three years. It is destined from its popularity to run through as many more; but as yet, it has found no publisher on this side of the Atlantic, although its merits are well-established in British literature. Observing a new edition announced by Bentley, it reminds us that the neat, unpretending little work has not received any recognition from our republic, nor has any attention been called to it. In truth, the American public, deeply interested in travellers and travelling in the east, or in whatever comes from the press illustrating scriptural scenes and events, have strangely overlooked this production, which furnishes a better insight into oriental domestic life than any account published for many years.

Egypt is now what it was in the days of the crucifixion and of Julius Caesar; it is unchanged, it is unchangeable, in its social structure, as the pyramids in their architecture, or the sands of the desert in their external aspect. To understand the condition of the people now, is to understand their condition when the Israelites under the direction of Moses went out from among them. To enter the family circle in the valley of the Nile for the purpose of learning their present mode of life, is at once an introduction to all their progenitors who ever dwelt in the same region in the reign of the ancient Pharaohs. In order to see what a Roman city was in the first century, it is requisite to put aside the ashes from a submerged Pompeii, or to remove the superincumbent earth from a buried Herculaneum. But in Egypt, to comprehend what was the moral, social, intellectual, religious appearance of the country when Cleopatra sailed upon the river, all that need be done is to push aside the mat which serves for a door to the first mud hovel met with, or pass within the first portal where heavy hinges grate upon the ear an uncordial reception.

The same Egypt can be seen which Alexander of Macedon, Sesostris, and the shepherd-kings beheld. Egyptian institutions were never buried; or, if buried, their sepulchre is above ground. A living death is visible on all sides; it is a palsy that struck the land long before the dawn of history, and may remain as it now is, when the history of the present century has passed into oblivion. Although the Egyptian mind and morals will not die in their body, still no motion is in its limbs, no quickening vitality in its joints, no trembling in its nerves; the blood is stagnant; a black pool as destitute of national animation as the waters of the Dead Sea. Progress is a term never heard of near the habitation of the Sphinx; and the period of ruins has gone by. Everything seems running rapidly to demolition; but nothing is demolished; decay has in that mysterious soil a perennial existence, a species of recuperation, that renews itself like the integuments of neighboring snakes, lizards, and toads, which bury themselves in the same rich slime.

A book, therefore, on modern harem life in Egypt, is in one sense a hand-book for historians in their explorations after the vanities and household troubles of good King Solomon, when his domestic peace and quiet, his comfort and felicity, were invaded by many more spinsters than the Levitical law allowed to any one wise man. This dame Emeline is the very woman to aid them in their archaeological researches. Her volume furnishes important hints and information; and if on the title-page nine centuries before the Christian era were substituted for the date of publication, instead of nineteen centuries after it, the change would be so unimportant in a chronological point of view, that no annalist would be aware of the anachronism. It would look like a second edition of Herodotus, revised and improved, for the benefit of the ladies, and far surpassing in truth the first impression of that ancient Halicarnassian, full of his old gallinaceous and bovine stories.

Mrs. Lott, an English school-teacher, was engaged in London to proceed to Egypt in 1862-3, to take charge of the education of his highness the Grand Pasha Ibraim, five or six years old, the son of Ismail Pasha, the viceroy, and the grandson of the renowned and illustrious Ibraim. The lady in due time arrived at the port of Alexandria, consigned to the delicate consideration and tender mercies of the viceroy's agent, like any other bale of valuable and perishable drygoods. Her first glimpse of the land in the culinary and creature-comfortable line of development was not favorable. She next proceeded to the city of Cairo by rail, and was invited to the house of the vice-regal commercial partner, a German in lineage and language, but with principles and refinement somewhat neglected from want of proper planting and propagation in his youthful European culture. At the residence of this gentleman she was perpetually served with the same dishes at breakfast, noon, and dinner—boiled and roast mutton, stringy and dry, vermicelli soup, tomatoes stuffed with rice, chicory, spinach, and "the whole of the dishes were swimming in fat;" oranges and coffee followed after. Considering that the thermometer was raging above 100°, Fahrenheit, this oriental feed was rather oleaginous, and the lady longed for the wings of a dove to devour her provender elsewhere. So far she had learned one important lesson, and thus paints it. She says:

"I can endorse the veracity of the statement made by a contributor to Once a Week, who most naively and truthfully asserts that 'the land of Egypt is ruled over by twenty princes: one of whom is the viceroy, eighteen of the others are known as consuls-general of European nations; but the twentieth is the most powerful of all, and his name is Baksheesh, (gift, present, bribery.')"

To the high and mighty Prince Baksheesh, in duty bound we render all due homage; we bow our lowest salaam, and are pleased to make his acquaintance. He is not wholly unknown to fame in this hemisphere; for a popular superstition prevails in the rural districts that his majesty has many loyal subjects and followers in our own dearly beloved and dearly governed model republic. Prince Baksheesh is a power in our institutions, and a party to much of our legislation. The misfortune of the unprotected female was, that she did not propitiate the potentate; the superabundant fat would have been speedily withdrawn from the bill of fare.

At last the day arrived for her to remove to the harem of the viceroy on the other side of the river; and she was destined to leave the hands of the agent in the same sort of consignment in which she had come into them, that is, amid bales, barrels, and boxes of merchandise. The dame, therefore, had no opportunity to take a look into the royal market-basket, to ascertain how Ismail Pasha provided for his little private family of three hundred females of different colors, ages, sizes,—and sexes of the feminine and neuter gender. Although the English governess has an eye for the ornamental and beautiful, it is nevertheless only one eye; the other throws its dark splendor upon the useful and substantial. Sometimes she endeavored to close both against sights which were neither the one nor the other. The truth of history, however, compels her to supply her readers with specimens of all these. She observes:

"The vice-regal standard, the everlasting crescent, floated at the stem and stern. On they rowed most vigorously, and in less than ten minutes I was landed at the stairs of the harem. The building is a very plain structure, the interior of which is painted like the trunks of the trees of the Dutch model village of Broeck. In appearance it resembles the letter E, and is a large pile, composed of five blocks of buildings. Proceeding to the one which faced the Nile, I entered the harem, ('sacred,') passed through a small door—the grating sound of whose huge hinges still seems to creak in my ears like the grinding of the barrel-organ of an itinerant Italian or Savoyard—which led into a court-yard, at that time lined, not with a corps of the Egyptian infantry, with their shrill brass bands playing opera airs, but with a group of hard-working Fellahs and Arabs, toiling away like laborers in the London docks, and rolling into the immense space hundreds of bales of soft Geneva velvets, the costliest Lyons silks, rich French satins, most elegant designed muslins, fast gaudy-colored Manchester prints, stout Irish poplins, the finest Irish linens, Brussels, Mechlin, Valenciennes, Honiton, and imitation laces, Nottingham hose, French silk stockings, French and Coventry ribbons, cases of the purest Schiedam, pipes of spirits of wine, huge cases of fashionable Parisian boots, shoes, and slippers, immense chests of bon bons in magnificent fancy-worked cases, boxes and baskets, bales of tombeki, and the bright, golden-leaved tobacco of Istambol, (Constantinople;) Cashmere, Indian, French, and Paisley shawls of the most exquisite designs; baskets of pipe-bowls, cases of amber mouth-pieces, cigarette papers, and a whole host of miscellaneous packages too various to enumerate, of other commodities destined for the use of the inmates of that vast conservatory of beauty, all supplied by his highness's partners. For, be it known to you, gentle reader, that the Viceroy of Egypt may most appropriately be styled par excellence the Sinbad of the age, the merchant-prince of the terrestrial globe.

"Here I was received by two eunuchs, one of whom was attired in a light drab uniform. ... I was then ushered through another door, the portals of which were guarded by a group of eunuchs, similarly attired, but whose uniforms were most costly embroidered. Their features were hideous and ferocious, their figures corpulent, and carriage haughty,

"They also salaamed me in the most oriental style. Thence, passing along a marble passage, I entered a large stone hall, which was supported by huge granite pillars which led me to the grand staircase, where I was received by the chief eunuch, who is called kislar agaci, 'the captain of the girls.'

"This giant spectre of a man ... advanced toward me, made his salaam, and ushered me, the hated, despised Giaour, into the noble marble hall of the harem, which was then for the first time polluted by the footsteps of the unbeliever. The scene around me was so singular and strange that I paused to contemplate it. The hall was of vast dimensions, supported by beautiful porphyry pillars, and the marble floor was covered with fine matting. I was now handed over to the lady superintendent of the slaves, a very wealthy woman, about twenty-four years of age, with fine dark-blue eyes, aquiline nose, large mouth, and of middle stature.

"She was attired in a colored muslin dress and trousers, over which she wore a quilted lavender-colored satin paletot. Her head was covered with a small blue gauze handkerchief tied round it, and in the centre of the forehead, tucked up under it, a lovely natural dark-red rose. She wore a beautiful large spray of diamonds arranged in the form of the flower 'forget-me-not,' which hung down like three tendrils below her ear on the left side. Large diamond drops were suspended from her ears, and her fingers were covered with numerous rings, the most brilliant of which were a large rose-pink diamond and a beautiful sapphire. Her feet were encased in white cotton stockings, and patent-leather Parisian shoes. Her name was Anina: she had been formerly an Ikbal 'favorite.' ... The lady superintendent now took me by the hand, led me up two flights of stairs covered with thick, rich Brussels carpet of a most costly description, and as soft and brilliant in colors as the dewy moss of Virginia Water. The walls were plain. Then we passed through a suite of several rooms, elegantly carpeted, in all of which stood long divans; some of which were covered, with white, and others with yellow and crimson satin. Over the doorways hung white satin damask curtains, looped up with silk cords and tassels to correspond, with richly gilded cornices over each. ... Against the walls were fixed numerous silver chandeliers, each containing six wax candles, with frosted colored glass shades made in the form of tulips over them. On each side of the room large mirrors were fixed in the wall, each of which rested on a marble-topped console table supported by gilded legs. The only other articles of furniture that were scattered about the apartments were a dozen common English cane-bottom Kursi-chairs."

She is next conducted further on to some dormitories, where bedsteads are wanting, being an article of furniture unused by the Gypsies. Against the walls were piled up beds in heaps, covered over with a red silk coverlet. On the divan was placed a silver tray—both toilet-tables and wash-hand-stands being unheard-of comforts—containing the princesses' toilet requisites. In her general inspection the governess is led to the apartments of the Princess Epouse, the mother of the little boy for whom Mrs. Lott is engaged. This princess is dressed—but let dame Emeline describe the scene, as only a lady can do it:

"The Princess Epouse, attired in a dirty, crumpled, light-colored muslin dress and trousers, sat à la Turque, doubled up like a clasp-knife, without shoes or stockings, smoking a cigarette. ... Her feet were encased in babouches, 'slippers without heels.' ... In front of the divan, behind and on each side of me, stood a bevy of the ladies of the harem, assuredly not the types of Tom Moore's 'Peris of the East,' as described in such glowing colors in his far-famed Lalla Rookh, for I failed to discover the slightest trace of loveliness in any of them. On the contrary, most of their countenances were pale as ashes, exceedingly disagreeable, flat and globular in figure; in short, so rotund, that they gave me the idea of large full moons; nearly all were passé. Their photographs were as hideous and hag-like as the witches in the opening scene in Macbeth, which is not to be wondered at, as some of them had been the favorites of Ibrahim Pasha. ... Some wore white linen dresses and trousers. Their hair and finger-nails were dyed with henna. ... They had handsome gold watches ... suspended from their necks by thick, massive gold chains. Their fingers were covered with a profusion of diamond, emerald, and ruby rings; in their ears were ear-rings of various precious stones, all set in the old antique style of silver. ... Behind stood half-a-dozen of white slaves, chiefly Circassians."

The mother leaves a favorable impression on the mind of the governess, who, being finally dismissed from the interview, pursues her explorations and makes a great discovery neither complimentary to the princess nor cleanly, where water is abundant, but where ablutions seem to be abnormal; for it is written in her journal that

"Thence we passed along a stone passage which leads to her highness's bath-room. ... The marble bath is both long and wide, with taps for hot and cold water. The water actually boils into which their highnesses enter. This only occurs when they have visited the viceroy, and not daily, or even at any other time. The bath of the poets is a myth."

The governess at last reaches her own chamber, where she is destined to sleep and seclude herself in her leisure hours. The prospect at first is not inviting, nor does a second view afford more encouragement; an evident sense of disappointment, if not of dismay, is experienced; and thus she pours forth her vexation:

"On the right-hand side of the first room was the small bed-room which was assigned to me as my apartment. It was carpeted, having a divan covered with green and red striped worsted damask, which stood underneath the window, which commanded a fine coup-d'ceil of the gardens attached to the palace of the viceroy's pavilion. The hangings of the double doors and windows were of the same material. The furniture consisted of a plain green painted iron bedstead, the bars of which had never been fastened, and pieces of wood, like the handles of brooms, and an iron bar, were placed across to support the two thin cotton mattresses laid upon it. There were neither pillows, bolsters, nor bed linen, but as substitutes were placed three thin flat cushions; not a blanket, but two old worn-out wadded coverlets lay upon the bed. Not the sign of a dressing-table or a chair of any description, and a total absence of all the appendages necessary for a lady's bed-room; not even—"

Well, well, Mrs. Lott, the "not even" was, in your civilized opinion, certainly very odd to be sure. But don't mind trifles; let it be forgotten; let us ramble elsewhere. You were saying just now something about four broad steps; go on; that's right.

"Four broad steps led down into the garden, close to a plain white marble-columned gate, on the top of which stood out in bold relief the statues of two huge life-sized lions. ... Here and there were scattered rose-trees, the brilliancy of whose variegated colors and the perfumes of their flowers were delightfully refreshing; geraniums of almost every hue; jessamines, whose large white and yellow blossoms were thrice the size of those of England, and a variety of indigenous and eastern plants, shrubs, and flowers, which were so thickly studded about that they rendered the view extremely picturesque, and perfumed the air, grateful to the senses. Verbena trees, as large as ordinary fruit-trees; other plants bearing large yellow flowers, as big as tea-cups, with most curious leaves; cactuses, and a complete galaxy of botanical curiosities, whose names the genius of a Paxton would be perhaps puzzled to disclose, ornamented those Elysian grounds."

This is only one sketch of only one spot in the many gorgeous and luxurious localities. Space forbids copying more; but the book states:

"Leaving these neglected scenes of amusement, we proceed along a path to the right, through a superb marble-paved hall, the ceiling of which is in fresco and gold. It is supported by twenty-eight plain pink-colored marble columns, surmounted by richly-gilded Indian wheat, the leaves of which hang down most gracefully, on each side of which, and also above ... are some very handsome lofty rooms, the ceilings of which are also in fresco, with superb gilded panels. ...

"The grounds of Frogmore, the Crystal Palace, St. Cloud, Versailles, the Duke of Devonshire's far-famed Chatsworth, and our national pride, Kensington Gardens and Windsor Home Park, exquisite, beautiful, and rural as they are ... all lack the brilliant display of exotics which thrive here in such luxuriance. The groves of orange-trees, the myrtle hedges, the beautiful sheets of water, the spotless marble kiosks, the artistic statuary, are all so masterly blended together with such exquisite taste, that these gardens ... completely outvie them."

The princesses were sometimes as highly adorned as the halls of marbles and frescoes, and as ornamental as the gardens of blooming exotics. On the festival of the Great Bairam, or on state occasions, when lady visitors made formal calls to compare complexions and cashmeres, their highnesses are spoken of with the highest delight:

"They wore the most costly silks, richest satins, and softest velvets; adorned themselves with the treasures of their jewel caskets, so that their persons were one blaze of precious stones. That crescent of females (for they always ranged themselves in the form of the Turkish symbol) was then a parterre of diamonds, amethysts, topazes, turquoises, chrysoberyls, sapphires, jaspers, opals, agates, emeralds, corals, rich carbuncles, and rubies. In short, the profusion of diamonds with which the latter adorned their persons from day to day became so sickening to me that my eyes were weary at the sight of those magnificent baubles, to which all women are so passionately attached."

But weary as were her British eyes, still she gazed in rapture when the darling gems were on exhibition; moreover, in the journal the impressions were faithfully recorded. On another occasion, when some princesses were coming,

"The Princess Epouse, the mother of my prince, was attired in a rich, blue-figured silk robe, trimmed with white lace and silver thread, with a long train; full trousers of the same material, high-heeled embroidered satin shoes to match the dress. On her head she had a small white crape handkerchief, elegantly embroidered with blue silk and silver, and round it placed a tiara of May blossoms in diamonds. She wore a necklace to correspond, having large sapphire drops hanging down the neck. Her arms were ornamented with three bracelets, composed of diamonds and sapphires, and an amulet entirely of sapphires of almost priceless value. ... At times my eyes, when looking at the Peris arrayed in all their gems, have become as dim as if I had been fixing them on the noonday sun."

What young lady of an enterprising turn of mind would not be willing, after reading these glowing descriptions, to pack up her Saratoga trunks, to engage the Adams Express Company, and to charter the Cunard line of steamers, to aid her on to a glorious future near the base of the pyramids? Certainly not one of the ambitious and strong-minded. But they need not ask the English governess to go with them. She has been there; she will respectfully decline going again—not she, as Shakespeare's other old lady in Henry the VIII. exclaims, "not for all the mud in Egypt." For another part of the story remains to be told; another side of the picture to be presented; and dame Emeline tells it truthfully, she paints it lifelike; the rose is beautiful, but beware the serpent under it.

Mrs. Lott is apparently a gentlewoman, refined, accomplished, intellectual, with an appreciation of the difference between civilized society and barbarism. But in the vice-regal harem, education was not to be found; ignorance was universal, superstition reigned supreme. None could read, or write, or sketch, or converse on a rational subject. No one could sing or perform on a musical instrument; none cared for to-morrow or for a hereafter. Their daily routine had all the monotony of the desert with its burning sands, destitute of variety in incident or shade of change; it was equally unproductive and utterly worthless. They had nothing to expect with pleasing anticipation; they had nothing to remember with delight. Physically, morally, mentally they were unclean and debased. Their passions, when aroused, were ungovernable; their greatest joy was revenge upon a rival; and their revenge was deadly, by suffocation or submersion, poison or the bow-string. Their amusements were all sensual; their weary hours of listless idleness were passed in indulgence of some enervating vice alike deleterious to health, comfort, and color.

The servants were steeped in only a lower depth of dirt and depravity. The princesses had the power of life and death over them, and it was a power often exercised; they would put them to the torture for a trivial fault, the breaking of a plate or the falling of a cup; and cheeks and arms seamed with parallel rows of the red-hot iron, attested how often and how unmercifully cruel had been their punishment. The food of the menials was not prepared for them, nor given to them; but they purloined by stealth from the dishes on their way to the princesses' apartments; and after their repast was ended, the refuse of chicken and pigeon bones, of mutton, of soup, of rice, of vegetables, and the rinds of fruit were tossed into a basket in one loathing mess, mixed up, around which the servants flocked like carrion birds, and, squatting on the floor, inserted ravenously their reeking hands to pick out disgusting morsels with their dripping, unwashed fingers.

The laundry did not require much water; for the volume informs us,

"Those who performed the duties of washerwomen were occupied daily in their avocation, except on the Sabbath, (Fridays.) But that was not very laborious work, since neither bed, table, nor chamber linen are used. Thus they were engaged until twelve, when their highnesses partook of their breakfast separately. It was served up on a large green-lackered tray, minus table-cloth, knives and forks, but with a large ivory tablespoon, having a handsome coral handle, the evident emblem of their rank as princesses. It was placed upon the soofra, a low kind of stool, covered with a handsome silk cloth. The repast occupied about twenty minutes. Then pipes, in which are placed small pills of opium, or more often cigarettes and coffee, were handed to them, and each princess retired to her own apartment. Thus they became confirmed opium-smokers, which produced a kind of intoxication." ...

Their common indulgence in opium, with a profuse supply of European wines and Schiedam gin, produced its natural results, and is thus depicted:

"Oftentimes after the princesses had been indulging too freely in that habit to which they had became slaves, their countenances would assume most hideous aspects; their eyes glared, their eyebrows were knit closely together; no one dared to approach them. In fact, they had all the appearance of mad creatures, while at other times they were gay and cheerful.

"They only combed their hair (which was full of vermin) once a week, on Thursdays, the eve of their Sabbath, (Friday, Djouma;) when it was well combed with a large small-tooth comb; and pardon me, but 'murder will out,' the members of the vermin family which were removed from it were legion. It was afterward well brushed with a hard hair-brush, well damped with strong perfumed water. Their highnesses never wore stockings in the morning, nor did they change any of their attire till afternoon."

When the summer heats set in, the harem was transferred to the coast at Alexandria, to inhale the fresh breezes from the sea. The preparation for flight was attended with some rich scenes and ludicrous exhibitions. But their transit on the railroad, boxed up like pigs or poultry on a cattle-train, is indescribable in a decent print. The prelude to the trip will bear repeating; it is an amusing contrast with the festal robes on the day of the Great Bairam; the cutaneous sensation it excites is the penalty to pay for the knowledge imparted; the company is right regal.

"As soon as orders had been given to the grand eunuch to hasten the departure of the vice-regal family to Alexandria, ... there was bustle all day long. One morning when I returned from the gardens, ... I entered the grand pasha's reception-room; ... there were their highnesses, the princesses, squatted on the carpet amidst a whole pile of trunks. They were all attired in filthy, dirty, crumpled muslins, shoeless and stockingless; their trousers were tucked up above their knees, the sleeves of their paletots pinned up above their elbows, their hair hanging loose above their shoulders, as rough as a badger's back, totally uncombed, without nets or handkerchiefs, but, pardon me, literally swarming with vermin! No Russian peasants could possibly have been more infested with live animals. In short, their tout ensemble was even more untidy than that of washerwomen at their tubs; nay, almost akin to Billingsgate fisherwomen at home; for their conversation in their own vernacular was equally as low. They all swore in Arabic at the slaves most lustily, banged them about right and left with any missile, whether light or heavy, which came within their reach."

At last the governess lost her health. The food was too unsuitable for a Christian woman, and the atmosphere, redolent of the overpowering rich perfumes of the gardens mingled with sickening, stupefying opium smell and smoke, along with other odors, almost intolerable. After visiting Constantinople with the harem, she threw up her engagement and returned to England.

This abasement of woman is not to be wondered at; for wherever the Christian idea of marriage is lost or subverted, woman becomes the mere object of passion, and degradation is sure to follow.

Translated From Etudes Religieuses, Etc.,
Par Des Peres De La Compagnie De Jesus.

The Flight Of Spiders.

A Paper Read Before The French Academy Of Science, March, 1867.

About fifteen years ago, I was sitting in an arbor of my garden, reading, when a little spider fell on my book, whence I could not tell, and commenced to run over the very line I was reading. I blew hard to chase him away, but he would not go. He lifted himself strangely up, and I cannot explain how, but he lodged on a sprig of verdure just above my head. "Well," said I, "for a little animal like that, this is a wonderful feat! How has he accomplished it?" To satisfy myself, I took him up again, balanced him on my book, and, after assuring myself that he had no invisible thread to aid him, I blew again, and again the little fellow did the very same thing. With redoubled curiosity, I tried him once more, and, to see better, I sat down in the bright sunlight. Again I balanced him on the book, looked at him as closely as possible, and, when I felt assured no precaution could have escaped me, I blew once more. ... Resuming the same inclined position, the spider as quick as lightning darted the finest possible thread out of him, raised himself in the air, and disappeared.

I confess I was stupefied. Never had I imagined these little animals could fly without wings; so I consulted several works on zoology, but I was astonished to find there was no mention made of the flight of spiders, nor of the ejaculatory movement of which I had witnessed so curious an example. [Footnote 96]

[Footnote 96: In M. Eugène Simon's Natural History of Spiders, the most recent work of the kind, he says, speaking of the manner in which l'épéire diadème constructs its web: "Several authors suppose that the spider darts its thread like an arrow, others imagine it throws it upward in the air while flying as a fly would; but neither of these explanations rests on observation, and they are, after all, simple hypotheses." Then, describing his own observation as to how a spider acts to make fast its great threads, he says, "It seems to take a horizontal position, and moves contrary to the wind." M. Simon's work gives us nothing else to lead us to suppose he has observed the wonders spoken of.—Tr.]

So there was a new question presented to me, and my vocation to study the habits of these little animals—which hitherto had given me no concern—decided for me. I immediately lost all repugnance, all distaste, and threw away all the unjust precautions of which the spider is too often the object, and of which I was as culpable as any one else. And from that time I welcomed its appearance; was most happy to meet with it, looked for it, indeed, and studied its habits almost with furor. And I can say that, thanks to this hearty preoccupation, which never left me, I found every opportunity to follow my inclination, and knew where to find spiders in all sorts of unheard-of places.

Such are the singular effects of curiosity once excited, and still another proof that, in order to study nature well, we need only a mysterious glimpse of the unknown to redouble all our energies to explain it thoroughly.

And as in this study, trifling as it may appear, I seem to have met with facts not known hitherto, but which deserve to be understood, I here resume the principal ones: those that treat of the flying of spiders; of the habitation of some species in the air; and of the gossamer or air threads—a singular phenomenon, for a long time discussed in vain, but which I believe I have definitively solved. I only ask the naturalists to judge one fairly, not by theory, but by facts. And I am persuaded, if they will take the pains to verify what I advance, they will find me exact; and, if they begin doubtingly, I hope, after they have read my observations, they will conclude as others to whom I have communicated them. Mocking and incredulous at first, they have ended by believing their own eyes, and testifying to the evidence presented to them. May my labor prove useful, and, above all, contribute to the glory of the great God, whose just title is, Magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis.

I.
Threads Thrown Out By Spiders.

The first thing that I perceived, and that put me on the track of the rest, was, as I have just said, that the greater part of aranéides, especially certain varieties of thomises lycoses, etc., besides the thread that they always draw with them, have the power of darting one or more of extraordinary length, and of which they make use to accomplish distances, to fasten their webs from one point to another, and even, as we shall see further on, to raise themselves in the air and there to seek their prey. The spider always points his abdomen to the side where he wishes to go. The thread shoots like an arrow, fastens itself by the end to the place destined, and the spider passes as under a suspended bridge. If this thread is cut, it is immediately replaced by another; and the ejaculation is so prompt, so rapid, the thread so straight, so tenuous, so brilliant, that it might be taken, if I may so express myself, for the jet of an imperceptible ray of light. To perceive this clearly, the spider must be held on a level with the eyes, which should be shaded, and examined with one's back to the sun.

The best time for such an observation is in the morning or evening, when the sun is low in the horizon and the temperature is mild; for without this latter condition the torpid spider is more inclined to creep along the earth than to throw out new threads.

Sometimes, to excite them, they may be held by their ordinary thread and gently shaken or blown upon—just a few puffs of breath—which they detest.

I have thus been able to scan closely, while watching their development, this instantaneous jet of thread, which could not be less than five or six yards long, that is, fifteen hundred or two thousand times the length of the spider. What a tremendous apparatus must be necessary to these little animals for so rapid an ejaculation, and one so disproportioned to their size! And especially if we consider that this thread, inasmuch as it adheres to the animal, has not the appearance of an independent organ, but seems solely to obey its will. Thus I have seen spiders, who seemed to miss the end desired with the first stroke, continue to hold the thread in the same direction, and actually palpitate, if I may so say, while striving to make it adhere.

But a truly interesting sight, and one obtained at a very trifling expense, is that which the thomises bufo offer, described by Walckenaer, in the first volume of his History of Insects, page 506. In truth, these araneides do not only throw out one thread, but an entire bundle of them, and are seemingly guided by the smaller threads, just as a peacock unfolds by degrees his splendid plumage.

And even in one's own room this sight may be enjoyed. It is only necessary to collect these thomises and keep them in separate boxes, and nourish them in winter with one fly or so a month. Then take the boxes out, put them on a table in a very warm room, and sit a little in the shade and watch them. Very soon from each box will appear a multitude of threads, of extreme freshness and fineness, which the spider throws into the air with inexhaustible profusion. At certain seasons of the year we can enjoy this spectacle again, and at even less expense.

II.
Flight Of Spiders.

Another property not less remarkable that these araneides possess (thomises bufo, lycoces voraces, etc.) is that of flying; that is to say, of elevating themselves in the air, there sustaining themselves, and travelling about horizontally and vertically, with or without a thread; in a word, acting exactly as if in their own element. This fact I have witnessed a thousand times, and it has been certified to by a great number of people, who, at first incredulous, and alarmed for the laws of gravitation, were compelled to confess the reiterated testimony of their own eyes.

I had some pupils under my charge, and to them this study became a continued source of amusement. During their recreation, they found suitable spiders for me, and, when they brought them to me, I rested them on my fingers and made them mount upward in the air; and invariably, after having watched them for some moments, they were entirely lost to sight. But when I made the discovery—of which I will speak later—of the general migration which some species make yearly toward certain regions of the atmosphere, I had no longer any trouble to enjoy this performance to my heart's content.

The flight of spiders is sometimes very rapid, particularly when they start. They often escape from one's hands while they are carefully watched. This happened to me one day with a voracious lycose that I had for a long time importuned without success. Just as I was going to give him up as entirely stupefied, he suddenly escaped from me by a lateral movement, so rapid that for a moment I lost sight of him; but, when I found him a moment afterward, he was suspended quietly in the air. I also remarked that he set out without throwing any thread, and this was not the only time I made the same observation. I was experimenting one day with some amateurs in the interior court of the college where I live, and, having started a lycose, we saw him occupy himself at first with the neighboring galleries, running up and down for about twenty yards, about a tenth of a yard from the arch, against which he knocked himself from time to time, and groped about to look for a passage; not finding one, he threw himself back into the court, raised perpendicularly, and disappeared toward the clouds. His thread, if he had one, could not have been longer than a tenth of a yard. Ordinarily, however, before they ascend, they throw out a thread which they follow for a short time; then, arriving at a certain height, they break it, in order to navigate more easily. If any is left before them, they wind it rapidly with their feet, throw it aside, and form those pretty little crowns of white silk in form of cracknels, that we often see flying in the air in time of gossamers. Again, they balance themselves quietly with a thread which rises perpendicularly above them, and gives them the appearance of floating.

But a peculiarity still more remarkable in the flight of spiders is the attitude that they take in flying. They generally swim backward, that is to say, the back turned from the earth, the feet folded on the corselet, and perfectly immovable. How can such a flight be explained, for they are already heavier than the air? Plunged into alcohol, they sink quickly; but in the air they seem to possess an ease, a liberty, a facility of transport, so admirable that I have never been able to see in them the slightest motion, nor even an apparent increase of weight. Does not this fact present an interesting question for the skilful to contemplate?

III.
How Long They Can Remain In The Atmosphere?

At this portion of my history I have to relate facts the most curious and unexpected; and, unfortunately for me, more true than probable. I acknowledge I was loath to publish them, or assume concerning them any responsibility. But I was firmly convinced, and therefore hoped to be believed, especially by this generation of fearless naturalists, who are astonished at nothing in nature, and who, having often been surprised in the relation of almost incredible marvels, must certainly make allowances for a few more in another quarter.

Let us look at, for instance, the wonderful things related of the argyronete, or aquatic spider. [Footnote 97]

[Footnote 97: The argyronete is a spider that lives in the water where she constructs a charming little edifice that appears surrounded with a silky mortar. The down that covers her contains a certain quantity of air for respiration. This gives her in swimming the appearance of a ball of quicksilver, from which we have her name.]

I could not tell anything more unlikely, so I will only exact for the atmosphere a companion to what the Père de Lignac discovered in the last century for the water. Yes, I pretend there are spiders that live in the air as well as those living in water, and that every year, from the earliest days of spring, there is, unknown to us, a general migration of spiders toward the atmosphere, where they pass their best season, form their nets, chase their prey, and only return to earth in the first fogs of autumn to find their quarters for the winter. I add, also, that this ascent and descent give rise to the curious phenomenon, still so badly explained, of the gossamer. And as it was to the study of this phenomenon that I owe my knowledge of the rest, may I be permitted here, by way of demonstration, to relate briefly the path I have followed and the proofs which have led to the conviction I express?

Attracted, as I was, by all that concerns spiders, I could not remain indifferent to a fact so important and interesting as the periodical apparition of those threads which in spring and autumn we see flying about in long white skeins, clinging to trees, to hedges, and to the vestments of the passers-by, carpeting the country in a few hours with more silk, and finer and whiter, than could be spun in a year by all the reels in the world. Admirable netting, glistening in the light of the setting sun, and reflecting the sweetest, softest tints of gold, vermilion, and emerald, and receiving the pretty and poetical name of "fils de la Vierge." Was there not between this phenomenon and my preceding observations a secret tie, some mysterious relation? I seemed to foresee it, and, setting to work immediately, rejected from the very beginning the usual explanation of this phenomenon.

How, indeed, can we admit these floating gossamers as merely the refuge webs of spiders, torn by the violence of the wind from the trees and forests and carried capriciously through the air? Will not the slightest observation convince us that they never appear but in the calmest moments, on days foggy in the morning, but afterward beautiful, and not preceding a storm; never in summer, often in the spring and autumn, and sometimes even in winter? If the winds carry them, why do they not appear in summer? Are violent winds and spider-webs both wanting? And who has ever seen one of these webs carried by a hurricane, especially in quantity sufficient to produce such a phenomenon? For the fall of gossamers sometimes lasts for almost entire days, and in certain countries during the middle of the day the fields are covered with them. Add, too, that violent winds are generally local, while this phenomenon is universal, and so periodical that in the same climates it appears at the same epochs, and, when one knows what produces it, it is easy to predict the time and day of the apparition.

Discontented, then, on this point with books and their explanations, I turn completely to the side of nature, and present all I observed.

From the first appearance of these threads in autumn, I was struck with the immense multitudes of new spiders met with everywhere, and which I had not seen during the summer. Little brown lycoses filled the air, so that it seemed as if it had rained them. If one walked in the fields, the meadows, the gardens, on the borders of the woods, among heaps of dried leaves, scattered all through the forest everywhere, could be seen myriads of these little brown spiders, jumping up and flying before me in every direction, and exactly such as I had already recognized as such excellent swimmers. After having passed the winter in the earth, in the holes of worms that they completed with a little silk, they reappeared after the cold in great numbers, to disappear again entirely in the first bright days of spring, and as if by enchantment. If one is seen again during the summer, we may be sure it is some female retarded by laying her eggs, and dragging laboriously her cocoon after her. Now, what has become of the others?

For several months I could not satisfy myself on this point, when, on the 21 St of October, 1856, in the enclosure of the little seminary of Iseure, near Moulins, I came to a positive decision, I was observing the fall of a large quantity of gossamers, which were falling on that day in large white flakes, when I perceived close to me in the air one of those little black spiders descending gradually, and as if she were jumping. She held by an invisible thread to a large flake, which came down slowly about seven or eight yards above her; but, keeping outside of it, she hung by the end of the long thread, like an aeronaut underneath his balloon. My attention once attracted, I noticed so great a number that I was astonished I had not taken care sooner; for there was scarcely a flake underneath which there were not one or two, and this sometimes even before the flake itself was visible. [Footnote 98]

[Footnote 98: There is an observation which confirms my own. We read in Darwin's Journal, page 159: "Mr. Darwin saw a large number of gossamers on the ship Beagle, when she was about 60 miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It was the first of November, and these gossamers were carried by a very light breeze, and on each were found an immense number of little spiders, similar in appearance, about the twelfth of an inch in length, and in color a deep brown. The smallest were a deeper shade than the others. None were found on the white tufts, but all on threads." Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of his Majesty's Ship, the Beagle, 1845.]

Each one was separated by a slender thread, and followed the motion of its balloon. If they met a tree or a bush, they landed upon it; if not, coming close to the earth, they ran along and were lost in the verdure. If I approached them too quickly or made a noise, they remounted rapidly by their threads and went to disembark somewhere else.

I also examined some of the flakes. They were all shining white mats, appearing as if they had been washed. Several contained wings and feet of flies, fragments of the case of little coleoptera, and other remnants of their aerial festivities.

This encounter was for me a revelation. I knew where the spiders, whom I had seen disappear so brusquely, took refuge, and, however rash my judgment may appear, I felt assured I had solved an interesting problem.

But to establish seriously and give to science an opinion so new and original as that the atmosphere may be peopled with spiders, I soon felt that more proof was necessary in order to sit down calmly under my personal conviction. So I concluded I should not be doing too much if I added to the verification of their descent that of their ascension, and could surprise them in this new migration. I waited, therefore, impatiently for the spring.

But that spring, and for five or six that followed it, great was my disappointment; for, though I perceived several isolated ascensions, yet nothing in the proportion I had imagined or that could justify my hypothesis. I began then to doubt seriously my success, when an incident occurred that relieved my embarrassment, and proved how trifling sometimes are the causes which lift the veil from nature. I was looking straight upward, but sitting close to the earth, and so as to be able as much as possible to exclude the sun from my eyes. And here, by the way, a fact is made palpable, by no means microscopic, but which has escaped so long not merely the observation of the crowd of vulgar observers, but of those even who are wide awake and study carefully; namely, that it is not necessary to carry one's nose always in the air, if I may so express myself, to examine closely, to investigate, or to render a faithful account of phenomena.

On looking upward—as an ascension only takes place on very beautiful days, succeeding generally to bad weather—spiders cannot be distinguished from the multitude of other insects which fill the air. But if, on a beautiful day, mild, calm, and brilliant in sunlight, succeeding as nearly as possible to a rain warm with the south wind, at about nine or ten o'clock in the morning, a post is chosen on an eminence of a meadow or an avenue, and there, as near the ground as may be, and crouching low, the observer will look horizontally, he will perceive a series of fire-works, formed of innumerable threads launched from every direction and inclined toward the sky. This is the prelude. Soon the spiders detach themselves and mount slowly by their threads. The most conspicuous are the thomises bufo, because they are the largest, and because they only ascend with an entire bundle of threads, which gives them the appearance of small comets.

Thus have I decided

1st. That there is not only one ascension every year, but several, at least partial ones; that they do not always take place in spring, but often in the autumn, and sometimes even in the winter; and in general, from the descent which has taken place in the beginning of autumn until the definitive ascension in the spring, there are but few favorable days of which the spiders do not profit to make an aerial journey, or at least to throw out a large number of threads. Thus, in the Beaujolais, where I have lived for several years, there were partial ascensions on the 1st, the 19th, and the 28th of November, 1864; the 21st, the 23d, and especially the 25th of October, the 9th of November, and the 6th of December, 1865. In 1866, the 18th and the 30th of January, the 3d of February, the 3d, 14th, and 31st of October, and the 17th of December. In 1867, the 10th of February, ... the last, however, less considerable than might have been predicted by the beauty of the day. The day previous was so mild, though cloudy, that many of the spiders may have embarked incognito. Many, also, may not have judged it a propos to fly away, for a great number still remained on the ground. I forgot to observe the temperature of all the days I have noted. The director of the Normal School of Villefranche having had the kindness to show me the meteorological register which he had kept with great care, I was able to prove that in calm weather only ten or twelve degrees of heat were necessary to induce them to mount upward. The least exposed begin; then immediately the others, so soon as the heat reaches them; but after three or four o'clock in the afternoon no more ascensions are perceived, unless they are provoked; and this does not always succeed,

2d. Before taking their flight, they generally cling to some elevated object that they meet with easily, such as shrubs, bushes, props of vines, or blades of grass escaped from the scythe. To these they affix their threads and warm themselves well in the sun before commencing their excursion. This is the happy moment for amateurs to make their observations, for there is scarcely a blade of grass that does not contain one or more; and, if the branches of young trees are suddenly struck with a slight blow, a great number are detached, suspended at the end of their threads; and very often rare specimens are thus found not discoverable elsewhere.

IV.
To What Height Do They Raise
Themselves in the Atmosphere?

On this point I have not been able to make any direct observation. Perhaps I have dreamed of offering objections to the concourse of intrepid human navigators who undertake such perilous excursions in the air, and for my interest in the study I have found two excellent reasons. The first, that it would be well for them to know that, if they have not had rivals, they have had precursors, who, for 6000 years, have executed silently and noiselessly what they have claimed for themselves by every effort of puffs and publicity. The second, and a still more serious objection and that I believe will truly interest the future in this young industry, is that if the argyronete and its bell has given to science the instrument with which the divers explore the depths of the sea, why may not the study of aerial spiders furnish for aeronauts—these divers in air—the complete apparatus which they require to raise themselves to any height, direct their movements, and maintain themselves at will? Have not these little animals resolved this problem for centuries? Yet the present state of aerostation does not afford ground sufficient for comparison.

We are, therefore, reduced to conjecture; and, if I may be permitted to express mine, this is what I think:

I believe that spiders rise to the same height where on the fine days of summer one can see the swallows and martins hover, almost lost to sight, in pursuit of gnats that people these regions of the atmosphere. I found this belief on the webs of spiders seen falling in autumn, that seem to come at least from nearly such heights. They begin to be seen at a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards, and there is no great temerity in affirming that they have already traversed a good part of their course. An observation made in 1864, if conclusive, would tend to make remoter still the habitation of spiders; for the fog that determined the fall that year was a high fog, that is to say, one of those uniform mists that hide the sky for several days together, and seem to extend to a great height. But, I repeat, this is all conjecture. One good observation would have been worth far more.'

V.
Conjectures On The Mode Of Building
Of Spiders In The Air.

Perhaps here I should stop, and, having stated facts, leave to others their explanation. How do spiders sustain themselves in the air? How can they so long brave the winds, the rains, the storms; arrange their webs in emptiness and without apparent means of support? Prudence counsels me to avoid these questions, but my rôle of simple observer permits them. However, in waiting for better things, I decide still to hazard some conjectures, were it only to prove that a fact once admitted, it would not be absolutely impossible for the wisest to explain it.

The first idea that came to me was that these spider-webs raise themselves in the air as the kites of children, and, made fast to the tops of trees and edifices by long threads, they are sustained by their own lightness. This idea was suggested to me by a sight I was witness to one day at the Seminary of Vals, near Le Puy. From a corner where I was in shadow, I perceived distinctly on each high ridge of the roof, lightened by the rays of the sun, long threads which rose perpendicularly in the air, like large cords, balancing themselves slowly right and left, without ever going out of a certain field of oscillation. But I soon gave up this idea. How admit, in truth, that on two or three threads, and without any other means of support, spiders could weave their true webs? Would not some of these aerial constructions tumble down every day, ruined by their own weight? while it is acknowledged they only fall in autumn, and always together.

I therefore rather incline to believe that the spiders are sustained in the air by the distention of an interior vesicle, analogous to that of fish, and that they ejaculate by their threads, which are numerous, and pierced with an infinity of little tubes, large bundles of threads, by which are taken the insects that serve for their prey; that they resist the winds as fish do the tossing of the sea, and their threads, being glutinous, are not dampened by the rain; and also being excellent conductors of caloric, as is proved by the abundant drops of dew which they pearl near the earth, on the hedges, etc.; and if after a calm night they are touched by an autumn fog, these heavy and moistened threads weaken and fall one over the other, and form the silky flakes that are seen from ten to eleven o'clock in the morning, flying about in cloudy days with the spiders who inhabited them during the summer. This, hoping for better, is the explanation I hazard, and I submit it with the rest to the appreciation of competent men. If only these pages attract attention to a merited subject, and provoke numerous observations, which alone can ever fully elucidate it, the author will be more than repaid for the few researches he has presented in this article.

Translated From The "Revue Du Monde Catholique."
John Tauler.
By Ernest Hello.

History has an astonishing memory. She records the day and hour of battles with exact fidelity. She knows a thousand things. She has recently discovered, if I do not mistake, the name of Julian the Apostate's cook. She remembers everything of little importance. The names of celebrated mistresses who have amused or poisoned renowned personages, are transmitted from age to age. Erudition has been making strides during the last hundred years, as if she had seven-leagued boots. To deserve the admiration and gratitude of mankind, however, she should not have degraded herself, but taken a higher sphere in her progress. Her memory indicates greatness of genius; but she is like calumny, she increases in size as she advances through the centuries. In her labors, researches, and exploits, she has been mostly busied with soldiers, and frequently forgotten God and man. She could not think of everything at once; the hidden history of humanity is yet to be written; the greatest events of the world are secret to this very day; and those who reflect on them are men of a special caste.

If there were question of the battle of Marathon, or of Antony and Cleopatra, our contemporaries would be found well instructed; but do they know John Tauler, the German Tauler, of the Dominican or preaching order?

Master Tauler was a great preacher—powerful and popular. One day he gave a learned discourse, in which he taught the way of perfection, with all his characteristic assurance. To become perfect, he enumerated twenty-four conditions, which he developed before an attentive and brilliant audience. After the sermon, a layman, one of the poorest and most ignorant of his hearers, came to him. History, by one of those distractions so usual for her to have, when there is question of God, has forgotten the name of this individual. This simple layman said to Tauler:

"Master, the letter kills, and the spirit gives life; but you are a Pharisee."

Doctor Tauler: "My son, I am now old, and no one has ever spoken to me in this manner."

The Layman: "You think I speak too bluntly to you; but it is your own fault; and I can prove that what I say to you is true."

Doctor Tauler: "You will do me a favor, for I have never loved the Pharisees."

Then the layman, probing into the doctor's mental condition, showed him that he was held captive by the mere letter of the evangelical law, and devoid of its spirit.

"You are a Pharisee," proceeded the layman, "but not a hypocritical Pharisee. You are not on the road to hell, but on that which leads to purgatory."

Doctor Tauler embraced the man, and said to him: "I feel at this moment as the Samaritan woman must have felt at the well; you have revealed to me all my faults, my son; you have told all that was most secret in my soul. Who, then, has told you? It is God; I am convinced it must be so. I entreat you, my son, by the death of our Lord, to be my spiritual father, and I, a poor sinner, will become your son."

The Layman: "Dear master, if you speak thus contrary to order and reason, I shall not remain with you any longer, but straightway return to my own house."

Doctor Tauler: "Oh! no. I beg you, in the name of God, to stay with me, and I promise not to speak thus again."

The docility of Tauler is sublime and touching. His great good will, which broke the pride of science, led him into the paths of spiritual contemplation.

"Tell me, I conjure you, in the name of God," said Tauler, "how you have succeeded in arriving at the contemplative state?"

The Layman: "You ask me a very odd question. I confess to you frankly that, if I should recount or write all the wonderful things which God has been doing to me, a poor sinner, for twelve years, there would be no book large enough to contain them."

The layman then recounted how he had been deceived in his spiritual life; how, influenced by Satan, he had practised imprudent austerities, which would have injured both his body and soul; and how, warned by God, he had returned to the paths of wisdom.

Both Tauler and the layman were then lifted up to the regions of contemplation. The unknown monitor then said: "If the God whom we worship could be comprehended by reason, he would not be worthy of our service."

But before his great illumination, Tauler suffered during two years frightful temptations. Abandoned, poor, suffering, that man of iron was shaken like a reed. The layman comes to his assistance, and sustains in his time of misery him whom he had crushed in his period of pride.

"For the first time," said the layman, "God has touched your superior faculties."

At the end of two years, the doctor again ascended the pulpit. The crowd which came to hear him was large. Tauler cast his eyes over the expectant multitude, then drew his cowl over his eyes and prayed.

The crowd awaited him; but he spoke not a word. Tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Tauler wept bitterly.

What a scene! The audience become impatient. Some one asks Tauler if he will preach. Tauler continues weeping. He wept and wept; and the multitude, anxious to hear his inferior oratory, and incapable of appreciating the higher eloquence of tears, could not comprehend the doctor's conduct. At last Tauler dismissed the assembly; for his sobs choked his utterance. He asked pardon of the people for having kept them uselessly waiting; and they went home. "Now," said some of them, "we see that he has become a fool."

But after five days' silence, Tauler preached before the friars of the convent, and he was sublime. One of the friars went to the pulpit and addressed the congregation as follows: "I am requested to make known to you that Doctor Tauler will preach here to-morrow; but if he acts as he did last time, remember not to blame me." "How will he succeed?" said one to another. "I do not know," was the answer; "God knows."

This time Tauler could control his voice, and silence was his theme. He had built his eyrie in silence, as an eagle on the summit of a cliff. His language, worked out in silence, seemed to long after it; to return to its home, and die away in the high sombre clouds of complete solitude. Silence is the doctrine of Tauler; his secret, his food, his substance and his slumber. Absolutely free from all oratorical finery, his sermons go right to the mark, without respect for conventionality or the cant of ordinary discourses. He utters what he wishes to express; praises solitude, and returns into it. This is the reason why his external word takes nothing away from his interior recollection. His words do not betray his soul. Silence is the guardian angel of strength.

It was doubtless this profound doctrine of silence which gave to the eloquence of Tauler an extraordinary virtue. This man, who seemed to come out of a tomb, appeared with a thunderbolt in his hand. Fifty men, after the sermon, remained in the church as if transfixed by an invisible hand. Thirty-eight of them were able to move during the half-hour which followed; but the twelve others could not stir. Tauler said to the unknown layman, his adviser: "What shall we do with these people, my son?" The layman went from one to the other and touched them, but they were as immovable as rocks.

Tauler was frightened at the paralysis which he had caused. "Are they dead or alive?" said he to his friend. "What do you think?" "If they are dead," replied the layman, "it is your fault, and that of the Spouse of souls."

This fact, which is historical, seems like a legend.

This picture would be magnificent, if an artist should sketch it. The place where Tauler had just preached was a cemetery, and the twelve men who were lying on the ground in ecstasy resembled those who slumbered in death beneath. The orator, walking with his friend through the audience, who had become almost his victims; feeling the pulse and the face of his hearers, to detect in them after the sermon, as after a battle, some sign of life; passing through the ranks of the vanquished and healing the wounded, must have seemed something superhuman. At last the friend of Tauler found that the thunderstruck hearers breathed still, "Master," said he, "those men still live. Request the nuns of the convent to take them away from here; for this cold floor will injure them." One of the nuns, who was a listener to the fearful discourse, had to be carried to her bed, where she lay motionless.

The biography of John Tauler, which serves as prologue to his sermons, says nothing of his exterior life; but dwells specially on his unhistorical and legendary character. Those who wrote about him have not deigned even to inquire in what century he lived. This strange man has dispensed history from its ordinary inquiries, as if eternity had been the sole theatre of his terrestrial existence.

His friends are as strange as himself. The astonishing layman, who tells his name to nobody, and gives us no means of discovering it, was not the doctor's only teacher. Another of his instructors was a beggar, just as extraordinary.

Tauler, according to Surius, petitioned God during eight years for a master capable of teaching him the truth. One day when his desire was more than usually strong, he heard a voice saying to him, "Go to the door of the church. Thou wilt find there the man whom thou seekest." He obeyed, and met at the appointed spot a beggar, whose feet were soiled with mud, and whose rags were not worth three half-pence. They began a dialogue, of which the following is a portion:

Doctor Tauler. "Good day, my friend."

The Beggar. "I do not remember ever to have had a bad day in my life."

Tauler. "May God grant thee prosperity."

The Beggar. "I know not what adversity is."

Tauler. "Well, may God make thee happy!"

The Beggar. "I have never been unhappy."

Urged for an explanation, the mendicant affirms that, "by means of silence, he had arrived at perfect union with God; never being able to find pleasure in anything less than God."

Tauler. "Whence comest thou?"

The Beggar. "From God."

Tauler. "Where hast thou found God?"

The Beggar. "Where I have left all creatures."

Tauler. "Where is God?"

The Beggar. "In men of good will."

Tauler. "Who art thou?"

The Beggar. "I am a king."

Tauler. "Where is thy kingdom?"

The Beggar. "In my soul."

We need often recall to our minds, in reading Tauler's life, that he was really a man of flesh and bone, an historical personage. Surius, Fathers Echard and Touron, have written his real life circumstantially. He was born in 1294. He was an Alsatian. He lived at Cologne, and died probably at Strasburg. We cannot fix the date of his death. It happened May 17th, 1361, says Father Alexander. Father Echard places it in the year 1379. Another historian, M. Sponde, puts it in 1355.

Let us now speak of his doctrine.

II.

The doctrine of Doctor Tauler is the practice of divine union. This union, transcending human thoughts and hopes, is the secret of his life and the leading principle of his work. His sermons are full of instruction regarding this union.

His Institutions also teach it. Some writers hostile to Tauler pretend to have found in his writings the foreshadowing of quietism. This mistake can be refuted in three ways: by the works of Tauler, which always affirm human activity to the most contemplative soul, thus clearly separating the doctrine of the quietists from that of the German thinker. Secondly, Bossuet, whom no one will suspect of any leaning toward quietism, says of Tauler: "He is one of the most solid and exact of the mystical theologians." Thirdly, Tauler himself predicted quietism in a remarkable monograph, blaming strongly all that Molinos, Madame de Guyon, and Fenelon afterward asserted.

A close study of the Alsatian doctor shows that he always gives to both internal and external activity all the reality and all the rights which they possess.

"If any one," says he, "ascends to such a height of contemplation as Saints Peter and Paul reached; and he perceives that a sick beggar needs his help to warm his soup, or for any other service, it would be much better for him to leave the repose of contemplation, and aid the poor man, instead of remaining in the sweetness of contemplative life." (Institutions, p. 195.)

Here is the plain truth and no illusion. And elsewhere he writes: "Men should not pay so much attention to what they do, as to what they are in themselves; for if the core of their heart be good, their acts will be so also without difficulty; and if their conscience be just and right, their works cannot be otherwise. Many make sanctity [to] consist in action; but action is not the chief element in it. Holiness must be judged in its principle as well as in its acts. In other words, we must be interiorly saints before we can perform exterior holy actions. No matter how good may be our works, they do not sanctify us as works. It is we, on the contrary, who make them meritorious, in virtue of inner sanctity which is their producing principle. It is in the bottom of the soul that we find the essence of a just man." (Institutions, p. 156.)

Here is the truth again. Collate those two passages, after having studied them separately, and you will find that they throw complete light on the nature and value of human acts.

The almost continual ecstatic state in which Tauler lived, never made him forget his smallest duties.

It has been often remarked that grace adapts itself to the natural qualities of the individual whom it sanctifies. This is as true of nations as of individuals. In Italy, asceticism has the color of the sun. Italian ascetics shout, burn with ardor, and seem full of exaggerated transports to the nations of cooler blood. The landscape of Italian asceticism presents you a burning sky, an ocean of fire, and a scorching earth. Sadness is generally wanting. In Spain, the hue is more sombre. The same ardor is there; but ardor tempered with jealousy. There is interior disquietude in Spanish mysticism, and even adoration in it examines itself as if suspicious of its truth. In Germany, profound gravity and stern austerity lead the soul into a horrible place. In Italy, images come crowding together, and divine love, instead of rejecting them, embraces them. The soul of the Italian saint holds garlands of flowers in his hands, offering them joyously to the blessed sacrament. Familiarity and adoration unite, like the two species of electricity before the thunder-clap. Familiarity, wedded to adoration, appeared in St. Francis of Assisi. The greatness of that strange man, who saw brothers and sisters in everything, and conversed with water, fire, the birds, and his monks, in the same tone and spirit, is not immediately manifest to superficial minds. Plain good nature veils his wonderful character. In Germany, those images which poetry presents to love are accepted with great precaution. Adoration is sober in thought and expression; and aspires to something sublime, whose form and name are intangible. German adoration is philosophical, meditative, broad, comprehensive, austere, silent, wrapped up in herself, and self-sufficing. She borrows only what is strictly necessary from persons and things. The world is a servant which she employs only with regret. She holds aloof from all creatures, and her words sound like concession. She says to no one, "My brother," or "My sister." If she had a brother. he would be silence. Her sister would be the mist which surrounds God.

Tauler is one of the most majestic representatives of Teutonic asceticism.

A disciple of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and of that layman of whom we have written, in the wake of those two great characters he follows, with eye and wing of eagle, into the region of translucent darkness. He does not flutter there, he soars; or, if he flies, his motion is so high and rapid, that it seems like the active repose of a sublime and fruitful immobility.

Tauler seems to desire obscurity. The remarkable effects of his preaching on his audience are less like thunder pealing in his language, than like the awful presence of the sacred cloud where the thunder is reposing.

Every man is a universe in himself. Unity and variety are the two terms of the antinomy, without which there is no life. But perfection consists in equilibrium between those terms. Such perfection is very rare. In general the antinomy of life is replaced by the contradictory, which is death. Man is divided between good and evil, always attempting an impossible reconciliation between them. Contradiction is a dead force which tries to serve two masters. An antinomy is a living force which, having chosen a master, and obeying but him, desires to serve him in a thousand different ways always useful. Nothing better displays the unity of a landscape than the variety of colors which it presents to the eye at the same time. The lights and shades, the undulations of the soil, and the accidents of sun, clouds, villages, forests, and spires, all are harmonized in the eye of the spectator; and the more numerous, varied, and unexpected are the details, the more does he experience delight and a certain dilation of mind and heart in the contemplation of their unity. If he takes away some of the circumstances, he mars the effect of the whole; for he cannot even destroy a shadow without diminishing the sunshine. What is true of a landscape is also true of a book or a man. But Tauler lost the balance between unity and variety, for he gave all to one and nothing to the other. Few individuals, even among the greatest saints, have been so ardent in the sentiment, love, pursuit, and conquest of unity. He seeks after it incessantly, and it haunts him. He never seems to look at the road he is travelling. He fixes his eyes solely on the goal ever present to his soul. He turns neither to the right nor the left. He knows not whether there be flowers or thorns on the borders of his pathway. Do not ask him to imitate St. Antony of Padua, and preach to the fishes of the streams. He minds neither fishes nor birds. He seems to regard creation as a stranger, of whom he had heard tell long ago, but whose remembrance is now but faintly glimmering in his mind.

His love of unity, his call to unity, his transports for it, always take the same shape, the same key and accent; and produce in the end a certain monotony, which is not a question of doctrine, but an affair of nature and temperament.

Tauler somewhere relates the history of a hermit, from whom a troublesome visitor begged something that was lying in the cell. The hermit went in to find the required object, but forgot at the threshold what was wanted, for the image of external things could not remain in his head. He went out, therefore, and asked the visitor what he sought. The visitor repeated his petition. The hermit re-entered his cell, but again forgot the request; and was at last obliged to say to his guest: "Enter and find yourself what you seek, for I cannot keep the image of what you ask for sufficiently long stamped on my brain to do what you desire."

Tauler, in narrating this story, unintentionally describes his own character. In every one of his sermons, he chooses a text and a subject. This was required by circumstances and by his audience. But the moment he enters the cell of his contemplation, he forgets text and everything else, and mounts into the realms of sublimity where he loses himself in that supreme unity after which his heart is always aspiring. The moment he begins to fly, he forgets the course he must take. With one stroke of her wings, his intellect finds her love, and then soars in her natural element, with plumes unruffled. Far above modes and forms of earth, she stretches out her broad wings in the cerulean vault of her beloved repose. If any should then ask him about some ordinary detail, he would certainly answer like the recluse above mentioned: "Enter yourself, and find what you are inquiring after. I cannot keep the image of material or minor things long enough in my mind to fulfil your request."

Tauler is continually citing Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. In fact, these two great men are at home in the same latitudes. The sermons of Tauler are to the works of the Areopagite what a treatise of applied mathematics is to one on theoretical mathematics. Tauler, like St. Dionysius, dwells in the interior of the soul, that secret and deep abode, the name of which he is ever seeking without finding, and which he ends by calling ineffable as God himself.

"It is in this recess of the soul," he preaches, "that the divine word speaks. This is why it is written, 'In the midst of silence, a secret word was spoken to me.' Concentrate then, if thou canst, all thy powers; forget all those images with which thou hast filled thy soul. The more thou forgettest creatures, the more thou wilt become fit and ready to receive that mysterious word. Oh! if thou couldst of a sudden become ignorant of all things, even of thy own life, like St. Paul, when he said, 'Was I in the body or out of the body? I know not, God knows it.'" ... "Natural animation was suspended in him, and for this reason his body lost none of its powers during the three days which he passed without eating or drinking. The same happened to Moses when he fasted forty days on the mountain, without suffering from such long abstinence, finding himself as strong at the end as at the beginning."

The desire of Tauler that his hearers should become Christian children, ignorant or forgetful of everything in sublime ecstasy, shows plainly the nature of his charity. He wished for them absolute perfection, contemplative and active, transfiguration, transport, exactness, total accomplishment of truth, and the plenitude of all heavenly things. The atmosphere in which he lived favored his hopes and helped the efficacy of his teaching. He declares that in the monastery when a soul is suddenly called to some interior consideration, it can leave the choir in the midst of the exercises, and plunge itself unseen into the abyss of meditation to which God draws it. He also affirms that when friars pass several days in ecstasy, they have no reason to be disturbed at any irregularity of theirs which may result from such an accident, provided they obey the rule again, when they become masters of themselves. Thus the prodigious transports of true asceticism are ever strengthening; while those of false mysticism enervate the soul. Hence it is that Tauler, though he is always speaking of ravishments, never loses the character of force, and of that austerity which is the sign of God and the test of true contemplation.

"Where then does God act without a medium? In the depths, in the essence of the soul? I cannot explain; for the faculties cannot apprehend a being without an image. They cannot, for instance, conceive a horse under the species of a man. It is precisely because all images come from without to the soul, that the mystery is hidden from it; and this is a great blessing. Ignorance plunges the soul into admiration. She seeks to comprehend what is taking place in her; she feels that there is something; but she knows not what it is. The moment we know the cause of anything, it has no longer any charm for us. We leave it to run after some other object; always thirsting for knowledge, and never finding the rest which we seek. This knowledge, full of ignorance and obscurity, fixes our attention on the divine operations within us. 'The mysterious and hidden word' of which Solomon writes, is working in our minds." (Sermons.)

Many men of genius, from the beginning of the world, have studied the human soul, and many are illustrious for the profundity of their psychological researches. Yet compared to the great mystical writers, those philosophers are mere children. Merely human psychology skims over the surface of the soul, only analyzing its relations to the interior world. They are ignorant of the phenomena which take place in the secret recesses of the mind. The great light, the incarnate Word, alone can throw its rays into those abysses. It is remarkable that those who study the soul for curiosity, merely to find out, and consecrate their life to such investigations, discover very little. While those who care nothing for simple science, but who act virtuously, obey and glorify the Lord, see all things properly. Instead of aiding vision to peer into the soul's penetralia, curiosity dims the light. Simplicity is the best torch in those catacombs. Simplicity, commissioned by God, penetrates into the abysses of the soul, with the audacity of a child sent by its father.

The interior and extraordinary efforts by which Tauler rose to the height of contemplation, gave him, though he knew it not, an astounding knowledge of the resistance which man makes to man and to God; of our combats, defeats, and victories; and of those artifices by which we veil from ourselves our true situation during the battle. The rounds by which the soul ascends are counted, and yet the ladder of perfection has no summit.

The gospel, so merciful to sinners, vents all its wrath on the Scribes and Pharisees. All its charity is for external enemies; all its severity for interior enemies. Jesus Christ used the whip once in his life to show men in what direction his indignation was turned. We have Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery on the one hand; the money-changers of the Temple, the Scribes and Pharisees on the other. There is a line of fire separating sinners from the accursed. All Catholic doctrine, all ascetical tradition, is but the echo of Christ's mercy and Christ's anger. Tauler teaches like all the great doctors, in this respect.

He reprobates exterior practices which are devoid of charity, as the works of hell, most hateful to the Holy Spirit. The fixedness of his ideas gives a singular solemnity to his repetitions. On every page his hatred of works done without interior life shows itself. Such works are his abomination. In all his meditations, prayers, experiences, and contemplations, he condemns them. "This doctrine," says he, "ought to be attentively meditated by those who torment and mortify their poor flesh, plucking out the bad roots which lie hidden around the core of man's heart. My brother, what has thy body done that thou shouldst scourge it in that fashion? Those men are fools who act as if they wanted to beat their heads against the wall. Extirpate thy vices and thy bad habits, instead of tormenting thyself as thou dost." ... "There are men in the cloister and in solitude whose soul and heart are always distracted by a multiplicity of external things. There are men, on the contrary, who in public places, in the midst of a market, and surrounded by countless distractions, know so well how to keep their heart and senses recollected, that nothing can trouble their interior peace or injure their soul. These deserve the name of religious far more than the former." (Sermons.)

Tauler goes farther. When those men who place God in external acts remain apparently virtuous, "the Lord," says he, "turns away from them. But when, in his mercy, he allows them to fall into grievous exterior faults, then he returns to them and offers them forgiveness." Tauler is always in the sky. He never stays long on earth. "God," says he, "can unite himself to the soul simply, immediately, and without image. He acts in the soul by an immediate operation; he operates in the depths of the mind where no image ever penetrates, and which are accessible only to him. But no creature can do this. God, the Father, begets his Son in the soul, not by means of an image, but by a process similar to the eternal generation. Do you want to know how divine generation takes place? God the Father knows himself, and comprehends himself perfectly. He sees down to the very source of his being; and contemplates himself, not by aid of an image, but in his own essence. Thus he engenders his Son in the unity of divine nature. In this manner also the Father produces him in the essence of the soul, and unites himself to her." (Sermons.)

All the discourses of Tauler end by a refrain. The chorus of his song is ever divine unity. Tauler is hardly a man; he is a voice speaking in the wilderness, calling men to descend into the depths of their souls. All his doctrine may be resumed in this word, to which we must give its etymological signification: Adieu, à Dieu. [Footnote 99]

[Footnote 99: The point of these words is untranslatable. The sense is adieu to creatures; and turn to God—à Dieu!—[Translator's Note.]]

New Publications.

History of Civilization in the Fifth Century. Translated, by permission, from the French of A. Frederick Ozanam, late Professor of Foreign Literature to the Faculty of Letters at Paris. By Ashley C. Glyn, B.A., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: W. H. Allen & Co. For sale by The Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.

A work like this furnishes the best antidote to the poison contained in the writings of such sophists and falsifiers of history as Buckle and Draper. It substitutes genuine philosophy and history for the base metal of counterfeiters. It exhibits truthfully what Christianity—that is, the Catholic Church, which is concrete, real Christianity—has done in creating the civilization whose benefits we are now enjoying. The translator's preface furnishes so interesting a sketch of M. Ozanam's life and literary career, that we are sure of giving a great gratification to our readers by transferring the greater portion of it to our pages.

"A few words may be said as to the career of the author, Frederic Ozanam, whose name has not yet become widely known in this country. He was born August 23d, 1813, at Milan, where his father, who had fallen into poverty, was residing and studying medicine. His mother, whose maiden name had been Marie Nantas, was daughter to a rich Lyonnese merchant, and it was to that city that his parents returned in 1816. The father obtained there a considerable reputation as a doctor, and died from the effects of an accident in 1837. His son pursued his studies at Paris with great success, and was destined for the bar. He took a prominent place in the thoughtful and religious party among the students, and his published letters show how he became identified with the movement set on foot by Lacordaire and others. He was especially distinguished, however, by the foundation of an association of benevolence, called the Society of St. Vincent of Paul, which from its small beginnings in Paris spread over France, and has at the present time its conferences, composed of laymen, in all the larger towns of Europe. M. Ozanam showed, even during his student life, a leaning toward literary pursuits, and a distaste for the profession of the bar, to which he was destined; but he joined the bar of Lyons, obtained some success as an advocate, and was chosen in 1839 as the first occupant of the professional chair of Commercial Law, which had just been established in that city. The courses of lectures given by him were well attended, the lectures themselves were eloquent and learned, and M. Ozanam seems to have preferred inculcating the science of jurisprudence to practising in the courts. But in the course of the following year, 1840, he obtained an appointment which was still more suitable to his talent, the Professorship of Foreign Literature at Paris, and which gave him a perfect opportunity for the cultivation of his favorite pursuit, the philosophy of history. Shortly after his appointment, M. Ozanam married, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the duties of his calling; in travelling, partly for the sake of health and pleasure, partly to gain information which might be woven into his lectures; and in visits to his many friends, chiefly those who had taken an active part with him in upholding the interests of religion in France. He never entered upon active political life, though he offered himself upon a requisition of his fellow-townsmen as representative of Lyons in the National Assembly of 1848. In politics M. Ozanam was a decided liberal, in religion a fervent Catholic. His letters show a great dislike of any alliance between the church and absolutism, and a conviction that religion and an enlightened democracy might flourish together. He wrote in the Correspondant, which embodied the newer ideas, and was frequently animadverted upon by the Univers, which represented the more conservative party in church and state. His more important works were developed from lectures delivered at the Sorbonne; and his scheme was to embrace the history of civilization from the fall of the Roman Empire to the time of Dante. But failing health, although much was completed, did not allow him entirely to achieve the great object which he had originally conceived when a mere boy; and the touching words in which he expressed his resignation to an early death, when his already brilliant life promised an increase of success, and his cup of domestic happiness was entirely full, may be found among his published writings. M. Ozanam seems to have continued his literary labors as long as rapidly increasing weakness would permit, but after a stay in Italy, which did not avail to restore his broken health, he reached his native country only to die, September 8th, 1853, in the fortieth year of his age, and the heyday of a bright and useful career. He was lamented by troops of friends, old and young, rich and poor—the latter indeed being under especial obligations to his memory. His friend, M. Ampère, became his literary executor, and undertook the task of giving his complete works to the public, for which end a subscription was quickly raised among those who had known and respected him at Lyons and elsewhere. From the lectures which he had completed and revised, from reports of others, and his own manuscript notes, an edition of his complete works was formed in nine volumes, comprising La Civilisation au Cinquième Siècle, Etudes Germaniques, Les Poëtes Franciscains, Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Treizième Sièle, and Mélanges, to which were added two volumes of his letters.

"The work which has now been translated forms the first two volumes of the above series, and was intended by the author as the opening of the grand historical treatise which he had designed. As it was delivered originally in the shape of lectures, and preserves that form in the French edition, it has been necessary, in order to preserve the continuity of the historical narrative, to alter the constructions occasionally, and to pass over a sentence here and there which refers solely to the audience of students to which the lectures were originally addressed."

The Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library.
First series of 12 volumes, pp. 144 each.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
126 Nassau street. 1868.

This is the initial set of a New Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, now in preparation by the Catholic Publication Society. It contains 12 handsome volumes, put up in a neat paper box. The titles of the volumes in this, the first series, are as follows:

Madeleine, the Rosière;
The Crusade of the Children;
Tales of the Affections;
Adventures of Travel;
Truth and Trust;
Select Popular Tales;
The Rivals;
The Battle of Lepanto and The Relief of Vienna;
Scenes and Incidents at Sea;
The School-Boys and The Boy and the Man;
Beautiful Little Rose;
and Florestine, or Unexpected Joy.

From the above list it will be seen that the set comprises fiction, history, and adventures. This set of books has been selected with an eye to give our Catholic youth useful as well as entertaining reading. The illustrations are good, but might be better—however, they are a great improvement on the class of illustrations heretofore printed in our Catholic books. The type, paper, and binding are excellent. We hope these books will be extensively used as premiums in our schools, as well as find a place in every Catholic library in the country.

Assemblee Generale Des Catholiques en Belgique.
27 Sept., 1867. Bruxelles: Devaux.

This large volume of 900 royal octavo pages, which has been just received from M. Ducpetiaux, of Brussels, is a complete record of the transactions of the late Catholic Congress of Malines. Among other things it contains the complete report of F. Hecker on the state of Catholicity in the United States, correctly translated into French. It is truly surprising to see what an immense amount of business can be transacted in one week, when all are intent upon doing the work in hand, and nothing else. Some of our legislators might learn a valuable lesson in this regard from this volume. The noisy and vulgar writers for the newspapers, and the other clamorous declaimers in speech and print, who are constantly repeating their hoarse outcry of ignorance and superstition against the Catholics of Europe, would be completely silenced and put to shame, if that were a possible thing, if the records of the Congress of Malines could be placed in the hands of all their intelligent readers. We may safely challenge the world to produce another similar volume, bearing so clear an impress of intelligence, good taste, patriotism, philanthropy, and religious zeal as this. Give us only a sufficient quantity of Catholicity like this, and we will renovate the earth.

Received from Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:

The Ghost; a comedy in three acts. Taken from the French. Pp. 50. Price, 50 cents.

The Banquet of Theodulus; or, The Reunion of the Different Christian Communions. By the late Baron de Starck. New edition. Pp.204. Price, $1.

From H. M'Grath, Philadelphia: White's Confutation of the Church of Englandism, and Correct Exposition of the Catholic Faith. Translated from the Latin by E. W. O'Mahony. 1 vol., pp. 342. New Edition. Price, $1.25.

"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press, and will soon publish, the second series of the new Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, and a new edition of Moehler's Symbolism; Problems of the Age, Nellie Netterville, and A Sister's Story are now being printed, and will be ready in a short time.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. VII., No. 40.—July, 1868.

A Plea For Liberty Of Conscience.

Foreseeing that we shall be obliged, in this present article, to present some very unpalatable truths to a portion of our readers, we assure them in the outset that we do not wish unnecessarily to revive unpleasant recollections.

Facts are facts, however, history is history, and truth is truth; and so long as we do not cherish a malevolent spirit, or seek to embitter and envenom the minds of our fellow-men against each other, there is no reason why we should not have liberty to speak plainly, even about very ugly and very discreditable things. On the present occasion, we use this liberty in defence of the weak and defenceless against tyranny and oppression, in defence of the rights of conscience and religious freedom in the case of a considerable number of persons grossly disregarded and violated. The right which we undertake to defend is the right to embrace, profess, and practise the Catholic religion; and the wrong which we wish to contend against is the system of domestic and social tyranny by which this right is impeded. It may appear to some a very curious statement, yet we venture to make it boldly, that in every part of the world where the English race is dominant, Catholics have been engaged, ever since the era of Protestant ascendency, in a struggle for liberty of conscience against spiritual tyranny, either political, social, or both combined. We do not propose to go back to the period of penal laws, civil disabilities, and legal persecution in Great Britain and America, just at present. This is a chapter in history already tolerably well elucidated and likely to be still further commented upon in the future. We will let it pass, however, for the present, and confine our view to a more recent period, during which, theoretically speaking, in England Catholics have enjoyed full toleration, and in the United States equal liberty with other citizens.

Notwithstanding this theoretical liberty. Catholics have been exposed, as every one knows, to outbreaks of popular violence, in which their blood has been shed, their churches and other property burned and destroyed, and their religion made the object of denunciation, vituperation, and ridicule in a wholesale manner. The primary cause of this state of things is to be found in the representation which Protestant preachers and writers have made of the Catholic religion. On this head we will content ourselves with quoting the language of a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Williamsburg, L. I., which we have just seen in a report of one of his sermons published in the Brooklyn Times for March 17th, 1868:

"The duty of considering the question now submitted to us has required me to stand before shelves filled with volumes of antipapal literature, and to glance from page to page of its contents. The character of much of that literature is a shame and a scandal to the cause in which it is uttered. It is full of evil and uncharitable talk against Romanists and their clergy, and deformed with bad temper and bad logic and reckless assertion." A few sentences further on he designates a certain class of writers against the Catholic religion as the "scurrilous crew of antipopery-mongers, who make a trade of the prejudices and passions of the American public, feeding them with vituperation and invective."

This description applies to a class of writers in England and Ireland equally as well as to the class designated among ourselves. We pass over all that the general body of the Catholic clergy and people have had to suffer from the general prejudice against them created and excited by the calumnies and invectives of these writers and declaimers against their religion. We fix our attention upon one point only, what those persons have had and still have to suffer from this prejudice who have become Catholics from conviction and choice, or who have wished to do so, and would have done so, had they not been deterred by the violent opposition they have encountered.

In England, a little stream of reconversion began to set back to the ancient church during the cruel and despotic reign of Elizabeth, which continued to run during several succeeding reigns, but at last was either totally or almost dried up. Its source received a new supply through the influence of the French clergy who were refugees in England, and at length the current began to flow more fully and strongly than ever. Within the last twenty-five years the movement of return to Catholic unity has been steadily progressing, until it has become so considerable as to attract universal attention, and awaken general anxiety concerning its probable results. In the United States, a few rare and isolated instances of conversion occurred from time to time during the early part of the present century, which have become much more numerous within the past twenty-five years, from various causes which we need not specify. At present, there are probably fifty thousand converts within the fold of the Catholic Church of this Republic, a great many more who would gladly become Catholics if there were no sacrifices to be made in order to do so, and an indefinite number of persons who are more or less favorably predisposed toward the Catholic religion or partially convinced of its truth. From the first day on which these strayed children of the holy Mother Church began to retrace their steps to her blessed fold to the present moment, there has been essentially the same story to tell of the disregard and violation of that liberty of conscience and right of religious freedom which Protestants have been so loudly proclaiming ever since they have had existence. In the earlier period of this disastrous epoch, some have suffered a literal martyrdom, and all along, down to the present time, many others have endured a moral martyrdom which is perhaps harder to bear as well as more lingering in its agony. Very many have needed a virtue and constancy truly heroic or bordering on the heroic, in order to nerve themselves to the sacrifices and to push through the opposition which they have been forced to encounter as the condition of becoming members of the Catholic Church and following the voice of their reason and conscience.

Those whose memory goes back over the last twenty or twenty-five years, can recall the storm of indignation and obloquy evoked by the first remarkable conversions which took place as the sequel of the Catholicizing movement originating at Oxford. As a general rule, the converts in England, even though belonging to the highest classes in society, including the nobility, and well known for their exemplary moral character, found themselves ostracized from the circles in which they had been wont to move, shunned by their most intimate friends, in many instances excluded from intercourse wholly or in great measure with the members of their own families. Some persons of high rank were obliged to go abroad, in order to find the society of persons of their own class which they needed for themselves and their families. It was the same in our own country. A convert to the Catholic Church found himself treated as an individual who had abjured Christianity, engaged in a conspiracy against his country and the human race, or as if he had been detected in perjury or forging notes. Every one was speculating upon the motives and cause of his strange conduct, as they have been recently, in England upon the Rev. Mr. Speke's sudden disappearance and mysterious rambles. Insanity was the most frequent and the most charitable reason assigned for an act generally considered as utterly unreasonable and disreputable. Some were excluded from the bosoms of their own families; some were disinherited by those whose heirs of blood they would have been; and others, who were helpless, dependent persons, were thrown upon the world by near and rich relations, who had hitherto supported them, and would gladly have continued to do so had they consented to smother their consciences. Some have been thrown out of business and employment, reduced to straits in order to gain a living, or even to extreme poverty and suffering. We do not allude now to those Protestant clergymen with families who have resigned their benefices in the Church of England, or given up their salaried offices in the Protestant Churches of the United States. The sacrifices made by these individuals, although very great, were unavoidably necessary, and cannot be attributed to any injustice or illiberality in the Protestant community. But we refer to those cases where persons have been deserted and abandoned by those on whose previous good-will, patronage, or custom they had been dependent for the means of gaining their living, for no other reason than the simple fact of their becoming Catholics. We may add to these more serious matters the infinitude of petty grievances and annoyances to which many persons are subjected by their relatives and friends. Their religion is attacked and ridiculed, without regard to the proprieties of polite intercourse, as if a Catholic were out of the category of persons whose convictions and sentiments are entitled to respect. Obstacles are placed in the way of their fulfilling the duties of their religion. Their children are enticed to eat meat on days of abstinence, to attend Protestant churches, to read anticatholic books, to shun the society of Catholics, without regard to the conscience of the child or the authority of the parent. Every possible influence is brought to bear upon them to make them feel that their religion places them at a social disadvantage, and that Protestantism is more genteel and respectable. In short, if we try to imagine the state of things which converts to Christianity had to struggle with in Rome and the gentile world after the laws had ceased to persecute, but before the Christian religion had ceased to be a despised and unpopular religion, we shall have a very good counterpart of the present condition of Catholic converts in England and the United States.

The trials and difficulties of those who are on the way to the Catholic Church are even greater than those which have to be encountered afterward. Not to speak of the interior trials which are necessarily involved in the process of conversion, even for those who are perfectly free and independent, or even placed under influences which facilitate the transition to Catholicity, there are exterior difficulties in the case of most persons of the gravest and most distressing nature. Besides the opposition of relatives and friends, in the shape of argument, entreaty, expostulation, sorrowful disapprobation, which is the more painful and the harder to be overcome the more kind and affectionate it is in manner and spirit, the dread of wounding and grieving those who are dearest and most respected, disappointing their hopes and incurring their displeasure, there is often to be encountered the might of spiritual tyranny, the violence of a parent's or husband's despotic will, and, in short, a persecution worse to be borne than would be a summary trial and execution. Unhappily, these trials are often too great for the courage of those who have received the inward vocation to the Catholic faith, and who are required to undergo so much if they would follow it. Some are afraid of losing caste, some of being turned out of doors, some of losing their livelihood; others are afraid of encountering the anger and reproaches of their friends, or the scorn and calumny of the world, or the loss of popularity. There are those who are deterred by their dainty and fastidious dislike of mingling with the poor, and who cannot bring themselves to go to a church which is humble or mean in its appearance, to receive the sacraments from a priest of unpolished exterior. But these last have themselves only to blame, although we may commiserate their weakness, and lay the chief blame of it on the false maxims prevalent in the community at large.

It would be easy to cite numerous instances in illustration of all that we have just said upon this subject, from personal knowledge or the testimony of others; and if it were possible for the complete history of the conversions to the Catholic Church which have occurred during the last quarter of a century to be written and published, it would be, for the most part, only an extensive commentary upon the statements we have made. Even then the saddest part of the story must remain untold, unless all those who have been deterred from obeying the voice of conscience could be induced to publish their confessions to the world, and those who have died in perplexity and distress for the want of those sacraments which their own cowardice or the refusal of their friends prevented them from receiving, could come back from the grave to add their testimony to that of the living.

The writer of these pages was acquainted with a gentleman of eminent position in the world, who was for a long time a Catholic at heart, and who on his death-bed desired to see a priest with whom he was intimately acquainted, that he might receive the last sacraments from his hands. This priest, who was a man of the greatest dignity of character and universally venerated in the community, called at the house several times, was politely received, but never permitted to see the dying man. When the poor old man perceived his last hour drawing near, he called his faithful Irish nurse to his bedside, as the only true friend to whom he could open his grief, and confided to her the sorrow that was darkening his dying moments. He told her that he desired to see a priest, to make his confession and to receive the last sacraments, but that his request was denied, so that he had given up all hope of his salvation, and believed himself doomed to die in despair. The good girl comforted and soothed him, assured him that he need not distrust the mercy of God, and explained to him that in his case a perfect contrition for his sins would suffice for their full remission. He begged of her to teach him how to make the acts of faith, hope, charity, and contrition, to recite prayers by his side, and to help him to prepare for death. She did so, and through her holy ministrations his soul was tranquillized, so that he died in peace.

The writer was once sent for by a man of unusual intelligence and plain, respectable standing, who was in reduced circumstances, and dying of a slow consumption. He learned from the lips of this man that he had been for some time perfectly convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion, and was satisfied that it was his duty to be received into the church. Nevertheless, it was impossible to persuade him to act on his convictions, because he was sure that the assistance of certain societies, upon which his family depended, would be withdrawn. He hoped to recover, and promised that, if he did, he would profess his faith openly; but we never heard anything more from him, and have never heard the conclusion of his sad history.

It is but a few months since a young widow lady, a convert, was turned out of house and home, not very far from our own city, after the decease of her father, with whom she had been residing, by her own brother, for the sole reason that he did not wish to live in the same house with a papist. We will not multiply instances; but they will rise up in abundance before the memories of many who will read these pages; and if a recording angel could take down what will be remembered, thought, and felt by all whose eyes will peruse these lines, they would be transformed from a brief and tame summary into a whole volume of living and pathetic interest far surpassing the most thrilling tales of fiction; Tears will be shed, sad memories will throng upon many minds, many hearts will ache, we are assured, over the words we are writing in perfect calmness and composure, and without any direct intention of awakening emotion. Some will think of trials past, some of trials present, and others will recall to mind their own weakness and timidity in the hour when they were tried and found wanting. There are many others, however, and will be many more hereafter, to whom this plea for the liberty of conscience will be, as we cordially trust, not merely a subject of personal interest, but also a practical help in surmounting their difficulties. We allude to those who are now turning or who will hereafter turn their faces wistfully toward the Catholic Church, but have first to overcome the obstacles we have described above before they can enter its portal. For this class of persons we have the most profound sentiment of pity and sympathy. The rich and independent, the able-minded and able-bodied, who can take care of themselves, men who can assert their own rights, and those generous youths to whom a glorious career is open in the priesthood, do not claim our sympathy, for they do not need it. But we pity the helpless and dependent; those who struggle with poverty and live on the bounty of others, delicate, gentle women, and all the weak, feeble children of God who would fain follow their conscience if they were let alone and not interfered with, but who shrink back appalled when it is a question of nerving themselves to meet opposition and push their way through trials. It seems to us that there is something hard and cruel beyond all other forms of tyranny in that usurped, unjust despotism which is exercised over these tender consciences. What can be a more odious or flagrant violation of all right and justice than to attempt to crush a conscience by force, to quell it by threats, to wear it out by opposition, to stifle it by fear, or to lure it by selfish, temporal interests? All will answer this question alike, and admit, at least in theory, the wrong that lies in the attempt of any person to violate the rights of any other person's conscience. The only point really open to discussion is, What constitutes a violation of just and rightful liberty of conscience? The question respecting the right or expediency of enforcing obedience to the dictates of conscience and the fulfilment of certain moral obligations is quite a different one, though closely related to the antecedent question. We cannot, in arguing with non-Catholics on these points, assume the truth of Catholic principles, or urge any consideration which necessarily presupposes the Catholic religion to be the true one. Of course, in the last analysis, we must come back upon the fundamental principle that the law of God is supreme and must be obeyed at all hazards, let come what will. No matter what human laws, what private interests, what dreadful penalties, may stand in the way, God must be obeyed, conscience must be followed, duty must be done. The authority of the state must be braved, human affections must be disregarded, life must be sacrificed, when loyalty to the truth and to the will of God requires it. Those who reject the authority of the Catholic Church, however, do not admit that the Catholic law is the law of God; and we must therefore either make our sole issue with them on this precise point of the truth of the Catholic doctrine, which is the same thing as a declaration of perpetual war, or we must find some middle term common to both, upon which the peace of social relations can be settled and the mutual rights and liberties of conscience be secured. We are obliged, therefore, to waive all claim of right and liberty to practise the Catholic religion, which is based on its positive truth, so far as this argument is concerned, and to present only such claims as a fair-minded person, whether Protestant, Jew, or infidel, may admit as just and reasonable, without changing in the least his own particular opinions. It is not to be expected that all our arguments will be equally applicable to every class of persons, whatever their religious opinions may be; but we will endeavor to furnish at least one or two for each of the principal classes into which the non-Catholic community is divided. If some of our Catholic readers are offended by our seeming to take a tone too apologetic and defensive, we beg them to remember that the early Christian apologists were not ashamed to do the like. They vindicated the Christians of their own time from such accusations as worshipping an ass's head and drinking the blood of infants. It is painful and humiliating to be obliged to vindicate ourselves from gross calumnies; but it is an act of charity toward those who are deceived by these calumnies, and still more toward these helpless and defenceless persons who must suffer from them.

We begin on the lowest possible ground by affirming that a person in becoming a Catholic commits no offence against the laws of morality or against the civil and social laws commonly recognized among non-Catholics. There is no treason against society, no offence against domestic rights, no repudiation of any moral duties or obligations, nothing to make a person a bad citizen, a bad neighbor, a bad husband, wife, or child. There is no disobedience against any lawful external authority which has any right to inflict any penalties affecting a person's social or civil rights. There is no reason, therefore, why a person who embraces the Catholic religion should be treated by his acquaintances or society in general as a criminal, and made to suffer in his social and domestic relations. In our heterogeneous society, everything is tolerated which is not contra bonos mores. That which strikes at the order and peace of the natural relations binding us together in society cannot be tolerated even on the pretext of liberty of conscience or opinion. Therefore, Mormonism has no rights under our laws, and ought not to be tolerated, and Mohammedanism could not be tolerated. If the Catholic Church were really what it has been represented to be by many, it could not claim liberty or even toleration in non-Catholic states. But it is not what its enemies have represented it to be. A person who becomes a consistent Catholic will be a good citizen and respect the laws. He will be faithful to his social and domestic duties, and strictly observant of all moral obligations. It is not the spirit of the Catholic religion to introduce discord or trouble into families or societies, or to interfere with any just and lawful rights. The only annoyance which can arise will be the annoyance which persons wishing to violate the natural laws will meet with from the conscientious observance of morality by the Catholic party. Suppose a Catholic lady wishes to go to Mass, to confession, to devote a part of her time to meditation or charitable works? Does that necessarily interfere with the perfect fulfilment of all her duties toward her family and society? Is it any greater liberty than that which women generally expect to be conceded to them, and which they take at any rate, whether it is granted with a good or a bad grace? Let the question be decided by the actual conduct of those who have become Catholics in their relations with others who are not of their faith, and we are not afraid of the judgment which candid and fair judges will render. Certainly, then, they ought to enjoy the same liberty which is conceded to those who profess any other form of religion not contrary to the received standard of good morals, and to those who profess none at all. Those who profess the latitudinarian opinion that all religions are alike, and who claim unbounded liberty of opinion for all, ought to be the first to give to Catholics the full benefit of this privilege.

With those who are more strongly attached to their own form of religion and hold it to be the only true one, the case is somewhat more difficult. Such persons may say that a person brought up in what they call the true, Evangelical, reformed faith, or in the pure, apostolical, Protestant Episcopal Church, especially if he has been a communicant, and most of all if he has been a minister, is an apostate from his faith as a Christian, a renouncer of his baptism, and therefore a criminal before God and the church, if he, to use their language, becomes a Romanist. Let it be so. When argument and persuasion have been tried and have failed, let the church pronounce her spiritual censures on the disobedient member. We cannot complain of that. Let him be canonically deposed if he is a minister. We cannot complain of that, either. But is there any reason why our Evangelical or High-Church friends should think it necessary or expedient to proceed any further? Suppose they do regard the person in question as a delinquent and as an unfortunate dupe of error and delusion. Will our Evangelical friends affirm the principle that none but the elect are entitled to the rights and privileges arising out of natural and social relations? Will our High-Church friends affirm the same, substituting for the elect, consistent members of their own communion? If not, we cannot see why they may not allow Catholics the same indulgence which they concede to sinners, heretics, and infidels. We put them the plain question, whether they have any right to interfere with the conscience and the religion of another, or to use any kind of coercion or persecution against any one, whatever may be the relation in which he stands toward them. Some of them may perhaps deny that a well-instructed member of that which they deem to be the true church can become a Catholic conscientiously and sincerely. But suppose it is so. Where is the authority to compel him to fulfil his conscientious obligations of a purely spiritual nature? We are not now speaking of young children who have not attained to years of full discretion, over whom parents certainly have an authority which must be respected. But, apart from this exception, what authority can be claimed for enforcing any religious obligation by any other means than an appeal to the conscience itself? If there are any who really think there is a right of excommunication in their church which extends so far as to exclude a person from his privileges as a member of society, and to reduce him to the state of one who is vitandus, or an outcast to be shunned by all, we only desire that they will act out their doctrine impartially and universally. Is it not, at least, inexpedient to appeal to it in the present state of society, while no kind of disability is contracted by those who profess the principles of Bishop Colenso or Herbert Spencer?

The case may be supposed of persons, influenced by no ill feeling at all, who would desire to withdraw from all intimacy with relatives or acquaintances who have joined the Catholic Church, on the ground that their conversation and influence may be dangerous to young persons in the family. Such a motive as this we can respect, for we can and must respect fidelity to conscience, even when it is an erroneous conscience which is followed. Moreover, no one is bound to keep up any intimate relations which transcend the bounds of ordinary courtesy with any persons outside the immediate family circle, unless it is agreeable to himself to do so. But what is to be said of those who, on a plea of conscience, sunder the closest bonds of nature, or threaten to do so? We can easily understand that a Jew, a Puritan, an old-fashioned Lutheran, a Presbyterian, or an English Churchman might be so thoroughly absorbed in his religion, and so intense in his attachment to it, that the conversion of a wife or child to the Catholic Church would be a far worse blow to his affections, and a more blighting disappointment to his hopes, than would be the sudden death of either one, however tenderly loved. An intelligent Jewish gentleman once told the writer of this article that he was deterred from receiving Christian baptism by the fear of causing the death of his aged father; and this is not an unusual instance either among the descendants of the ancient Pharisees or the adherents of the "straitest sects" of Protestant Christians. In such cases, where no softening of the temper and no modification of the mental condition takes place, there is no room for argument. The word of our Lord must be fulfilled—that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. One who has to choose between submission to the will of another and the disruption of the most sacred human ties, must choose the latter when the former involves the violation of a certain and known law of God. There is, therefore, no other course open to a Catholic in such a case except the one of professing and practising the Catholic religion openly, without regard to consequences. If they are excluded from their homes and abandoned by their friends, they must try to bear it patiently. We would scorn to appeal to the mere sentiment of human pity or to the maxims of indifferentism, in arguing with any man who should say that his religious principles require him to banish a wife, a son, or a daughter out of his house. It is our opinion, however, that in most instances, after persons have had time for cool reflection, they will not deliberately affirm that their religious principles do require these harsh measures. No one will pretend that they require or authorize any kind of tyrannical or vexatious persecution, or an abandonment of those who have a natural claim to protection to poverty and suffering. We are disposed to think that prejudice, passion, wounded pride, and similar causes have a great deal to do with the line of conduct alluded to. And one good reason for thinking so is the fact that so many firm and consistent Protestants, and even bishops or other clergymen of standing, have acted differently, and have treated Catholic converts even of their own families with kindness and courtesy. We have supposed hitherto that we were arguing with a person who would not admit that a convert from the religion he himself professes can be sincere and conscientious. It is impossible, however, to sustain such a position on any ground which the majority of intelligent non-Catholics will admit to be reasonable; for it can be sustained only by one of three arguments. First, that the illumination of the Holy Spirit gives to the individual reason an infallible certainty of the truth of some one form of anticatholic belief. Or, second, that some such form is at least made morally certain by rational evidence of such a kind as to exclude all probability that the Catholic religion may be true. Or, third, that some certain and unerring authority, to which one is bound to submit his private judgment, exists in one of the several communions calling itself the true church of God. The first argument cannot be brought into the forum of discussion, because there is no certain, external test by which it can be proved that such an illumination exists, or by whom among various claimants it is possessed. The second is refuted by the simple fact that so many intelligent and learned persons are convinced by the Catholic arguments. The third is refuted by the fact that no one of the churches claims infallibility. High-Churchmen claim a teaching authority for their communion, but it is not claimed by their church itself in any such sense as to exclude the right and duty of testing its claims and doctrines by private judgment on the Scriptures. Those who make the claim of authority in behalf of this church do not pretend that it is more than a portion of the universal church, and therefore, by the very claim they put forth, directly suggest and provoke an examination of the question what the universal church really teaches. The most learned and eminent theologians among them distinctly assert that the doctrines of the Church of England must be interpreted in conformity with the teaching of the Catholic Church. Will any reasonable person, then, pretend that one may not examine all the evidence that can be adduced to prove what that teaching is; or that he may not conscientiously and sincerely adopt the conclusion that this teaching is really identical with the doctrine of the Roman Church? We may cite here the judgment of Dr. Johnson, who was a staunch Episcopalian, upon this point. Boswell relates it in these words: "Sir William Scott informs me that he heard Johnson say, 'A man who is converted from Protestantism to popery may be sincere. He parts with nothing: he is only superadding to what he already had. But a convert from popery to Protestantism gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as anything he retains; there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion that it can hardly be sincere and lasting.'" [Footnote 100]

[Footnote 100: Boswell's Johnson. Edit, Bait., Bond, 1856, p. 168]

In truth, every form of dogmatic and positive Protestantism presents its lines of fracture from the great mass of Christendom so conspicuously to the eye, that it is absurd to pretend that its relation to that mass is not a thing to be examined and judged of by every one who is capable of judging for himself, that is, by every one who is responsible to his conscience and to God for his belief upon those doctrines affirmed by the Catholic Church and denied by his own detached body. An old-fashioned, strict Israelite can make a far more plausible claim for authority over the conscience in behalf of the synagogue, than any Protestant can make for his church. The Jewish hierarchy had once authority from God, and has only been superseded by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ. We cannot argue with him, therefore, that a Jew who renounces Judaism violates no obligation of conscience toward a lawful authority, except by adducing the evidence that Jesus is the Messias foretold by the prophets. Upon his own premises he must regard such a person as an apostate and a rebel. The only reason which could have any weight with him, why he should continue to show the same kindness to a member of his family who had been baptized as before, would be, that it is better to leave such a case to the judgment of God, and refrain from an exercise of severity which could do no good, but rather aggravate the difficulty. The majority of Jews at present are, however, rationalists. They place the essence of religion in mere Theism and natural morality, regarding the peculiarities of Judaism as accidentals. On their own ground, therefore, they can have no excuse for obtruding any claim of Judaism over the reason, conscience, or private judgment of any of their number. Take away a divinely appointed, infallible authority, and in all matters of purely religious belief and practice each individual is in possession of full liberty, for the right use of which he is responsible only to God. Moreover, in matters of positive, dogmatic doctrine, the majority of non-Catholics acknowledge that only probability is attainable. Logic and good sense have brought them to this conclusion as contained in the premises with which they started. But in questions of probability and matters of opinion, persons of equal sincerity and conscientiousness may differ. We are certain that this will be admitted as an axiom by our non-Catholic readers. But if this be so, those who profess to be convinced of the truth of Catholic doctrines ought to be regarded as sincere and conscientious, which we think most of our non-Catholic friends will also admit. Every one must see, then, how contrary to every right and honorable principle it is to attempt to act on the minds of those who desire to become Catholics by any other means than argument and persuasion. How dangerous, how unjust, how mean it is to strive to terrify or wheedle them into a forced acquiescence in the will of others through human and worldly motives! It would be almost an insult to our readers to argue this point gravely. Those who follow the principles of Demas in the Pilgrim's Progress, and are in favor of religion only when she walks in silver slippers, will not publicly avow and defend any such base maxims, or maintain seriously that their great objection to the Catholic religion is, that it is not sufficiently genteel. Even the New York Herald flouts scornfully the religion of velvet cushions, which makes the elect to consist solely of the élite of society.

But at last we come at what is the real gravamen of the complaint against Catholics on the part of those who are disposed to be fair and kindly. It is not that we hold certain doctrines as opinions, or adopt certain modes of worship as suited to our taste. This could be allowed without difficulty as our undoubted right, provided we would admit that the Catholic Church is only the best and most perfect among several forms of religion. But we maintain its exclusive truth and legitimacy, and proclaim it to be the only way of salvation. It is unpleasant for one to have his wife, or children, or near friends, look upon him as a person excluded from communion with them in spiritual things and out of the way of salvation. Very true! But what does this prove? It proves that the ideal of society is only actualized in religious unity. It makes no difference what your ideal is, whether it is something purely natural, or, under some form, supernatural. There must be unity either in some negative or some positive form. That is, there must be something to give those who are closely connected on the earth the same idea of the tendency and end of this earthly life, and of the future life which is to succeed it. Yet we find that society is not in this ideal state among us. It is impossible for Catholics to sacrifice their convictions and violate the dictates of their conscience, for the sake of a unity which they believe to be chimerical. We believe that it is only the Catholic religion which can bring society to its ideal perfection, and therefore we shall, for this reason, as well as for higher ones, do all in our power to make it universal. Probably our Evangelical friends await the millennium, and other classes of the religious community await the universal triumph of some kind of church of the future, while the sceptics look for a millennium of science and common sense. Meanwhile, it is probable that some time must elapse before any such epoch shall arrive, and we must live together in all manner of political and social relations. It is only by a jealous regard for the personal religious liberty of every individual that we can live together in peace and harmony. Is it not, then, better that, if we cannot immediately heal all the wounds of society, we should at least alleviate them as much as possible, awaiting a more radical cure at a future time?

We have already, in a former article, expressed our views upon this point sufficiently, so that we need not dwell upon it any longer at present. Happily, these are the views which are practically carried out in a great number of cases, and are gaining ground more and more. The state of things we have described is becoming ameliorated even in England, but much more in our own country. If the just, honorable, and rational temper of the best class of non-Catholic Americans toward the Catholic religion and its members were universal, and all persons disposed to become Catholics were treated with the same delicate respect for their liberty of conscience which some have experienced, there would be no occasion for this reclamation in behalf of that liberty. Those of our readers who can class themselves under this category may understand, therefore, that with them we have no controversy; but are combating an enemy as hostile to their own domestic and social peace and well-being as to our own.

Benediction.

"We go so far, and with so much trouble, to obtain the blessings of certain holy persons, and of the holy father the pope; yet here is the Lord of saints, and the God of whom Pius IX. is only the vicegerent, and we cannot intermit our socialities or forego our ease to receive his blessing!"

E. A. S.

The Invitation.

The balmy May is breathing on the air,
The rich, red sun sinks slowly down the west.
Come forth, dear soul, and be an honored guest:
One doth invite thee to his house all fair;
One great and good, this eve, doth wait thee there.
Nay, nay, not that dear friend whose hand hath prest
So oft thy own; not any ruler blest.
Of happiest clime: a nobler friendship share.
Ah! no; no poet doth such kindness move;
No wise, nor good, nor grand, nor holy, whom
The race reveres: a better friend would prove
His love; a greater asks thee to his home.
Within the tabernacle of his love,
The Lord of heaven awaits thee: wilt thou come?

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

Chapter IX.

To this proposition Nellie joyfully assented, and he led the way accordingly up a rocky path winding westward toward the cliffs. Once or twice he turned as if to give her aid, but Nellie skipped like a young kid from rock to rock, exulting in her independence; and, finding that she declined assistance, he went on in silence until they reached a point among the cliffs, high enough to give them a full sea view toward the west.

The Atlantic lay beneath them, rolling in its mighty volume of deep waters, and dashing them against the cliffs below with the strength and calmness of a sleepy giant. Nellie had often seen the sea, that narrow strip of water, namely, which separated her own birth-home from the birth-place of her kindred; but of the mighty ocean, with its thousand voices coming up from the deep caves below, its murmurings and whisperings, its infinite variety of tints and aspects, its lights and shadows, its clear green depths and crystal purity, such as no smaller sheet of water can ever boast of, she had never even dreamed before; and as her eye roamed over the smooth expanse until it reached that uttermost point where sea and sky seem to blend together, a sense of vastness and power fell upon her soul which almost oppressed her. For a few minutes Roger watched her as she stood there in hushed and breathless admiration, but just as the silence was beginning to be oppressive he broke in by saying, softly, "Yes, yes! it is all bright, and smooth, and shining now; but I have stood here on an autumn evening, and watched it when it was black and swollen, brimful beneath the coming storm—when the wind seemed almost a living power—a thing to be seen as well as felt—as it swept over that mighty mass of waters, mingling its hoarse voice with theirs, and forcing on their waves, as a general forces on his troops, until it dashed them in a very frenzy of fruitless valor against the beetling cliffs beneath us. And, in truth, I almost prefer it in those moods," he added, like one thinking his own thoughts aloud; "for then it looks simply like what it is, a huge monster ever greedy for its prey, whereas, now, in this lazy sunshine, it seems to me nothing more or less than a great smiling treachery, wooing its victims toward it, only that it may afterward the more thoroughly engulf them."

"It is a great, beautiful terror, even as it is to-day," said Nellie breathlessly. "What a height we are above it! It makes me giddy only to look down?"

"Do not look, then," said Roger anxiously, "but rather turn inward toward yonder isle, which is only separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water. There are cliffs upon that island which look westward over the ocean and rise eighteen hundred feet above it, and the inhabitants will tell you that, when the weather is calm enough, you can see from thence, at the setting of the sun, the 'Hy Brysail'—the enchanted isle, the 'Tir-na-n'oge,' or land of eternal youth and beauty, to which death and sorrow never come, and where (so the old legend tells us) a hundred years of this mortal life pass swiftly as a single day. Few, as you may well suppose, are the favored mortals who have ever reached it, and fewer still, if any, who have ever come back to tell the tale of their adventures."

"It is a pretty legend," said Nellie, straining her eyes over the ocean as earnestly as though she seriously expected to discover the fairy island of which he spoke floating on its bosom. "Have you ever really seen anything like land in that direction?"

"If you choose, we can go some of these days on a voyage of discovery," said Roger, smiling at her seriousness; "only, if we do find 'Hy-Brysail,' I warn you that we shall have to stay there. Such is the law by which adventurers to its shores are bound. It does not seem a hard law either, does it? Would you object to it. Mistress Netterville?' to be young and beautiful for ever! Sorrow forgotten as if it had never been, beneath the spells of that magic land!"

Nellie drew a long breath, and her blue eyes grew well-nigh black with suppressed feeling as she looked westward toward the ocean. But she did not answer.

"Well," he said, finding she would not speak, "will you try the adventure with me, or do you still prefer earth and its passing showers to this land of eternal sunshine?"

Nellie sighed—it almost seemed as if she were making a real choice; and when he playfully repeated, "Have you decided? which shall it be—this old kingdom of Grana Uaille or Tir-na-n'oge?" she quite seriously replied:

"Not Tir-na-n'oge, certainly; though a year ago, perhaps, I might have chosen otherwise. But youth and its sunshine is not real happiness, after all, although sometimes it looks very like it; and even if it were, there is something to me in a life of happiness, simple and unalloyed, less noble, and less like the choice of a soul predestined to eternity, than in one of sorrow bravely borne."

"Sorrow has done its work well for you, at all events," said Roger, moved to a higher feeling of reverence than, two minutes before, he would have thought it possible to have entertained for a creature so young and still so childish."

"Woe to the soul upon which it does it not, once that soul has been delivered to its guidance," Nellie answered softly, and almost as it were beneath her breath.

Roger gazed upon her silently. It seemed as if she were changing beneath his very eyes from a bright, impulsive child into a woman of deep and earnest feeling—a woman in every fibre of her fine, strong nature—and yet still in the untried freshness of her sixteen years as innocent and confiding as a child.

"Then you prefer a happiness which would bring with it the zest of contrast?" he added, as if to prove her further.

"I would prefer, at all events, a happiness founded upon duty," she answered gravely; and then, as if half-ashamed of her own earnestness, she asked him lightly:

"Is it not strange to find these floating traditions of a paradise of peace and plenty among a people so completely bereft of both as these poor creatures, by their very condition as a conquered race, must necessarily be?"

"For that very reason!" he answered quickly; "for that very reason! Men despised as savages and treated as wild beasts, will either brood over schemes of real vengeance or soothe themselves with dreams of unreal bliss. Is it wonderful, therefore, that these poor people, with their dreamy and imaginative natures, should sometimes look wistfully over the broad ocean, and fancy they see a land where (if once only it could be reached) flowers, and joy, and eternal sunshine, would console them for the misery endured among these barren rocks, in which they have been forced by their enemies to seek—I was going to say, a home—it would have been far more correct to have said—a prison?"

"Nay, but now it is you that are unjust," said Nellie, smiling—"unjust to this fair land you live in. The kingdom of Grana Uaille can in no sense of the word be called a prison; and even were it ten times less beautiful than it is, to me it would still remain the one bright memory left me to look back to in this great year of sorrow."

Roger turned quickly round, but Nellie met his eye with such a look of frank candor and unconsciousness as to the possibility of any hidden meaning being attachable to her words, that he felt tacitly rebuked beneath it, and merely said:

"Ay; but, Mistress Netterville, I was talking of a home."

"Home!" said Nellie softly—"home, after all, is but the place where the heart garners up its treasures. These were almost the last words my dear mother said to me, and now I feel their truth; for if she were but once more at my side, the barrenest island in Clew Bay would become to me, I think, at once as home-like almost and dear as Netterville itself."

Again Roger seemed on the point of saying something, but again he checked himself and was silent.

Nellie saw the flush upon his brow, and interpreted it her own way.

"You are not angry. Colonel O'More," she said, with the simplicity of a child; "surely you do not fancy, because I spoke of Netterville, that I am ungrateful for the kindness which has made this island like a second home to me."

"No, indeed," he answered, with a smile so bright that it must have reassured her even if he had not said a word in answer. "No, indeed. I was, or at all events I am, only thinking how I can best persuade you and Lord Netterville to consider this island as your home, even in the absence of its lawful owner."

"Absence," said Nellie; "are you going then, and wherefore?"

"Wherefore?" said O'More quickly. "I marvel that you cannot guess. Because, Mistress Netterville, though I live upon this island, and though its inhabitants acknowledge me as their chieftain, it is yet a sorry fact that I am poor, poorer in proportion than the poorest of the number; an outlaw besides, with every man's hand and sword against me, and nothing but the traditions of past greatness to soothe, or, which much oftener is the case, to add bitterness to the meanness of my present station."

"Why call it meanness?" said Nellie, flashing up. "You have fought and lost for your king and country, as we all have fought and lost; and your enemies may take your lands indeed, but they cannot rob you of the glory of the cause for which you have contended, nor can they make you other than you are, a descendant of brave old Grana Uaille and the inheritor of her kingdom."

"Kingdom!" said Roger, with a little bitter laugh. "Turn your eyes inland, Mistress Netterville, and look from the northern point of Clew Bay southward toward the spot where Croagh Patrick casts its shade upon the bright waters. That was the old kingdom of Grana Uaille, and my inheritance upon the day that I was born. My earliest recollections therefore are connected with this wild land, and every rock and cave in its fair winding coast-line was as familiar to me in my childish days as the toys in their nursery are to more tenderly nurtured children. But they sent me at last to Spain for that education which would have been denied me here, and I only came back (while still a mere raw boy) to fight under the banner of my kinsman, I will not trouble you with a history of that war; you know it, alas, too well already! But when Preston took refuge in Galway, and the other chiefs of the confederation dispersed in different directions, I made the best of my way hither, hoping, amid the wilds and fastnesses of my own country, to be permitted to remain at peace. Rumors reached me on the way of the great scheme of the transplantation, and of the numbers flocking from the eastern counties to usurp, against their will, the possessions of their poorer brethren in the west. Soon after that, came tidings that the enemy had reserved the coast-line for themselves, then that they had swarmed over into some of the Clew Bay islands, and then, at last, that they had taken possession of and fortified Carrig-a-hooly, the old castle of Grana and the spot where I was born. Still I pressed unhesitatingly forward; for I remembered the 'Rath,' and knowing that it was, or used to be, almost a ruin, I hoped it would have escaped them, and that I might find there a refuge and concealment for the moment. Mistress Netterville, you can guess at the result. I went as you went, and found as you found, that it was occupied already. Major Hewitson—"

"What of Major Hewitson?" a voice asked impatiently at his elbow. Roger turned, and found himself face to face with Henrietta, who had glided so quietly up the mountain path that neither he nor Nellie had an idea of her presence until she announced it by this question.

Remembering her kindness of the day before, Nellie's first impulse had been to greet her eagerly; her next was to retreat a step behind O'More, with an uncomfortable though only half acknowledged consciousness that she herself would be considered by Henrietta as one too many in the coming conversation. There was, in truth, a flush on the young lady's brow and a sparkle in her eye, by no means inviting to familiarity, and without seeming conscious even of Nellie's presence, she repeated the question angrily to O'More:

"What of Major Hewitson? What of the owner of yonder castle?"

Roger looked at her steadily, then removing his cap, and speaking in his most courtly tones, he answered quietly:

"Nothing, Mistress Hewitson, nothing at least, unfit to be said in the presence of his daughter."

"That won't do!" cried Henrietta passionately, "that won't do. I heard his name as I came up, and I will know what you were saying of him."

Roger laughed a bright, merry laugh, which Nellie thought no ill-humor could have resisted, and he answered frankly:

"Nay, for that matter. Mistress Hewitson, if you insist upon it, you are quite welcome to hear not only all that I did say, but all likewise that I was about to say on the subject of your father. I had just observed to Mistress Netterville (whose person you seem somehow to have forgotten since yesterday) that I found Major Hewitson in possession of my last refuge on the mainland, and I was going to add that, as he had thus made his fortune at my expense, I trusted he would not endeavor to prevent me seeking mine, where in these days Irishmen most often find them, under the golden flag of Spain."

Spain! Nellie's heart leaped up suddenly, and then grew very still. This, then, was the meaning of that word "absence" which had already startled and, even against her will, disturbed her. This was his meaning. He was about to leave Ireland for ever, and make a home for himself in his mother's land. Nellie's heart leaped up, and then grew very still!

When she returned to a consciousness of the outward world around her, Henrietta was saying eagerly:

"Do not wait to know what he may think upon the subject; but go at once. Remember you are an outlaw, and that an outlaw is one whom the law permits to be hunted like a wild beast, and slain whenever or however he may be taken."

"And this, then, is the fate which your worthy father is preparing for me?" Roger asked in a tone of bantering politeness, which, considering the circumstances and Henrietta's evident excitement, Nellie could not help thinking almost unkind. "It is thus, like a wild beast, as you rightly term it, that he is about to set upon me and slay me unawares."

"I do not say it! I do not know it!" said Henrietta, almost sobbing. "I only say—only know that there are fresh troops of soldiers coming in to-day; that there have been for at least a week past prayer-meetings and preachings and waitings on the Lord, things which all portend a coming danger, and one that probably will point toward you. Colonel O'More, be merciful; take my warning for what it may be worth, and ask no further questions. Remember, that if I think not with my father in these matters, I am still, at all events, his daughter. And now I must begone, for with all my skill at the oar, and little Paudeen's to boot, I shall have hard work to get back in time for the mid-day meal, and the long and weary homily by which it is seasoned and made pleasant to unbelievers like myself."

Henrietta turned as if to depart, but yet she did not. She seemed to be struggling hard with some hidden feeling, and at last, with an effort so violent that it was visible, at least to Roger's eyes, she flung her arms round Nellie's neck.

"I know nothing of you but your name, young mistress," she said in a smothered voice; "but I know, at least, that I and mine have wrought you a great injustice. That injustice unhappily I have no power to repair; but yet, if ever you have need of any help that I can give, and will come and ask me for it, believe me, instead of heaping coals of fire on my head, you will be giving me the only real happiness I can feel, so long as I know that, by my residence in these lands, I am usurping the rights of others."

Henrietta almost flung Nellie from, her as she finished speaking, and then, without another word, either to her or Roger, she took the down path of the cliff, and was out of sight in a moment.

The two whom she left behind her continued silent, until they saw the "corragh," or small boat, in which she had come, and which had been waiting for her beneath the cliffs, gliding once more out into the open bay; then they also turned their steps homeward, and Roger, with no small dash of enthusiasm in his manner, exclaimed:

"Brave girl! would you believe it, this is the second time she has given me notice of a snare? only the first time," he added, with perhaps some intuitive guess at the sort of questioning that might be going on in Nellie's mind, "only the first time it was by Paudeen, who sails her boat, and who, she well knows, may be trusted in all that regards the safety of his chieftain. But what is the old white-haired gospeller up to now, I wonder? I own I am fairly puzzled!"

"We are not, I trust, the cause of this fresh trouble to you?" said Nellie timidly.

"Oh! no. I think not; for your sake I trust not," he answered thoughtfully. "It seemed to me to be altogether personal to myself; for if it had been about the priest, I think she would have said so."

"The priest! where is he?" Nellie asked. "I did not even know that there was one upon the island."

"Not upon this island, but on another, as you shall see to-morrow if you choose to make one of his Sunday congregation. But yonder is your grandfather watching for you: had we not better go and join him?"

Nellie assented, and quickening her pace almost to a run, she was in her grandfather's arms ere Roger, who came on more leisurely, had time to join them.

Lord Netterville gazed lovingly into Nellie's face, and smiled as he saw the bright color which exercise had called into her pale cheeks. Then he turned courteously toward his host. Perhaps he had some vague idea in his old head that the fate of his grandchild was to be henceforth, in some way or other, connected with that of Roger; perhaps he was not himself aware of the significance of his action; but this at all events is certain, that, instead of relinquishing Nellie's hand, he kept it tightly in his own, and when the young chieftain approached to greet him, laid it silently in that of Roger.

There was enough in the action itself, and still more in the way in which it was done, to send the blood scarlet to Nellie's brow, and she struggled to release her hand. For one moment, however, Roger held it, gently but firmly, he even made a movement as if he were about to raise it to his lips; instead of doing so, however, he dropped it quietly, and said in a low voice:

"Not now, not yet; but when you are once more at your mother's side, will you permit me to remind you of this moment, and to ask for the treasure which I now relinquish, at the hands of her who is your only lawful guardian?"

Chapter X.

Early the next morning, Nellie found herself gliding over the waters of Clew Bay in one of the native corraghs of the country, under the protection of her host. He was captain and crew all in one, and she was his only passenger; for it had been decided on the previous evening that Lord Netterville was not in a fit state to endure the fatigue of such a voyage, and with old Nora to look after his creature comforts, and Maida to guard him in his lonely fortress, Roger assured his granddaughter that she need have no scruple in leaving him during the two or three hours required for their enterprise. And Nellie had readily obeyed; for, if the truth must be told, she had begun to rely implicitly upon his judgment, and to submit to it as unquestioningly as if she had been a child. The little shyness produced by Lord Netterville's thoughtless action of the day before had entirely worn off, partly because she herself had striven womanfully against the feeling, but chiefly because Roger, thoroughly comprehending how needful it was to her comfort that, during her residence in his lonely kingdom, she should be entirely at her ease in his society, had adopted, as if by instinct, precisely the affectionate, brotherly sort of manner which was of all others the best calculated to produce this result. Nellie therefore gave herself up without a thought to the pleasant novelty of a brotherly sort of petting and protection which seemed to call for nothing more than quiet acceptance on her part, and she listened to Roger with the keen and unsated interest of a child as he told her the names, one after another, of many of the clustered islands and rugged rocklets, glittering like jewels in the deep bosom of the bay, almost always contriving to add some little legend or stray scrap of history, which gave each for the moment an especial, and (if the expression may be allowed toward inanimate objects) an almost personal interest in her eyes. At last he turned her attention toward the mainland, pointing out the graceful windings of Clew's varied shore, its wave-worn caverns and rocky arches, its cliffs with their mantles of many-colored lichens which made them look at that distance as if nature had stained them into an imitation of most curiously-colored marble; and beyond these again, its broad tracts of uncultivated bog-land, purple with heath in autumn, but now yellow with gorse or dark with waving fern, its hills rising one above another in lonely, savage grandeur, with Croagh Patrick, the monarch of them all, standing up on the south side of the bay, and looking down in haughty, cold indifference upon its waters as they flowed beneath him. Nellie followed his eye and finger eagerly as he pointed out each individual feature in the scene before her; but observing that he lingered for a moment on Croagh Patrick, she turned toward him for explanation.

"It is Croagh Patrick," he said; then perceiving that she was not much the wiser for the information, he added in some surprise, "Do you not know the legend, that it was from the cone of yonder hill St. Patrick pronounced the curse which banished all venomous hurtful things from Ireland? Had the saint lived in these days," Roger added, in that undertone which Nellie had by this time discovered to be natural to him in moments of deep feeling, "it is not, I think, against toads and snakes that he would have directed his miracle-working powers, but against the men who, coming to a land which is not their own, make war in God's name against God's creatures, hunting them down with horn and hound, and snaring and slaying them with as little compunction as they would have snared or slain a wolf."

"Would he then have expelled me also?" asked Nellie, with a wicked smile. "You know that I, too, (and more's the pity!) have blood of the hated Saxon in my veins."

"Certainly not," said Roger promptly, "with your blue-black eyes and blue-black hair, he would without a doubt (saint and prophet though he was) have been deluded into believing you a Celt."

"And so I am almost," said Nellie, with childish eagerness; "only consider, Colonel O'More, we have been in the country almost three hundred years, and in all that time, until my dear father's marriage with my mother, (who is unfortunately an Englishwoman,) it has been the boast and tradition of our race that its sons and daughters have never wedded save with the sons and daughters of their adopted land."

"Remember, then, that it will be for you to renew the tradition," said Roger suddenly, and without reflection. He repented himself bitterly a moment afterward, as he caught a glimpse of the flush upon Nellie's half-averted face, and in order to undo the evil which he had done he added hastily, "Yonder is our destination, that bare, black rock jutting out from the mainland far into the deep waters."

"It is not then an island?" said Nellie a little disappointed. "I fancied you said yesterday that it was one."

"Perhaps I did, for it juts out so far and so boldly into deep water that, from many parts of the bay, it looks almost like an island. You cannot see the hermitage from this, but yonder is the church, perched right upon the cliffs above."

"Perched!" repeated Nellie, with a sort of shudder. "I should hardly say even that it was perched, for to me it looks as if it were actually toppling over."

"And so it is," said Roger; "the tower is out of the perpendicular already, and I never hear a winter storm without picturing it to myself as going (as go most certainly it will some day) crash over the cliff. It is safe enough, however, in this calm weather," he added, for he saw that Nellie was beginning to look nervous, "or I never should have thought of it as a refuge for its present occupant, though, for that matter, it was but a choice of evils, his life being in jeopardy whichever way he turned."

"Is he then especially obnoxious?" Nellie asked; "or is it only that, like all our other priests, he is forced to do his mission secretly?"

"Especially obnoxious? I should think, indeed he was," said Roger; "for he was chaplain to the brave old bishop whom they hanged at the siege of Clonmel, and was present at his death. How he managed to escape himself, has always been a marvel to me; but escape he did, and came hither for a refuge. I stowed him away in the ruined hermitage overhead, with a few other poor fellows who are outlawed like myself, and in greater danger, and his presence has never been even suspected by the enemy; so that he might, if he had been so minded, have escaped long ago by sea. But when he found us here, without sacraments or sacrifice, (for our priests have been long since driven into banishment,) he elected to remain, and now, at the peril of his life, he does duty as a parish priest among us."

"Brave priest! brave priest!" cried Nellie, clapping her hands. "He must feel very near to heaven, I think, engaged in such a mission, and living like a real hermit up there on that barren rock."

"And so in fact he is; or at least he lives in a real hermit's cell," said Roger. "It was built in the time of Grana Uaille by a holy man, in whose memory the rock is sometimes called 'the hermit,' though more generally known as 'the chieftain's rock.'"

"But why the change of names?" asked Nellie.

"Because," he answered, with the least possible shade of bitterness in his manner, "because, as often happens in this wicked world, persons who have been made heroes in the eyes of men are made more account of than those who are heroes only in the sight of God. This hermit had lived here for many years in peace and quiet, when the chief of a tribe of Creaghts, at enmity with Grana Uaille, having been beaten by her in a battle, took refuge with him among these rocks.' The hermit hid him in the church, which, being an acknowledged sanctuary, even Grana Uaille, stout and unscrupulous as she was in most things, did not dare invade in order to drag him from its shelter. But she swore—our good old Grana could swear upon occasion as lustily as her rival sovereign your own Queen Bess—Grana swore that neither the sanctity of his hermit friend or of his place of refuge should avail him aught, and that, sooner or later, she would starve him into submission. She landed accordingly with her men, and surrounded church and hermitage upon the land side, that toward the sea being left unguarded and unwatched because, owing to the height and steepness of the cliff itself, and the position of the church tower, built almost immediately upon its edge, there seemed no human possibility of evasion that way. The chief, however, and his hermit proved too many for her after all; for by dint of working day and night, they succeeded, before their store of provisions was entirely exhausted, in cutting through the floor and outer wall of the church, and so making a passage which gave them instant access to the cliffs outside. This was by no means so difficult a task as at first sight it seems; for the floor of the building is only hardened earth, and its walls a mere mixture of mud and rubble, the very tower itself being only partially built of stone. I have often, when a boy, crept through the aperture, but it is nearly filled up with rubbish now, and almost, or I think quite forgotten among the people, who have been using the church for the last twenty years as a storehouse for peat and driftwood for their winter firing. Useful enough, however, the poor chieftain found it; for one fine moonlight night he walked quietly through it into the open air, swung himself down the cliffs as unconcernedly as if he had been merely searching for puffins' nests, and finally escaped in a boat left there by his friends for that very purpose. Next day, the hermit threw the church gates open, and sent word to Queen Grana that her intended victim had escaped her. You may imagine what a rage the virago chieftainess was in at finding herself thus outwitted; but I have not time to tell you now, for here we are close into shore, and it is time to think of landing."

Roger had lowered the sail while speaking, and he now began sculling the boat round a low sandy point which hid the harbor from their view. While he was occupied in this manner, Nellie, chancing to turn her head in the direction of Clare Island, perceived another corragh fast following in their track, and rowed by a boy, who was evidently working might and main in order to overtake them. She mentioned the matter to Roger, who instantly ceased his toil, and turned round to reconnoitre.

"It is Paudeen," he said at once. What, in Heaven's name, has sent him to us here?"

The boy saw that he was observed, and without stopping a moment in his onward course, made signs to them to await his coming.

Roger did as he was desired; and in a few minutes more the two corraghs were lying together side by side, and so close that their respective occupants could have conversed easily in a whisper.

"What is it, Paudeen?" asked O'More; "have you any message for me, or is there anything the matter that you have followed us so far?"

"It's Mistress Hewitson who is wanting to see you," said the boy. "She was prevented leaving as soon as she intended, and she sent me on before to ask you not to quit the island until she had spoken to you. You were gone, however, before I could get there; so, guessing well enough where you would most likely be upon Sunday morning, I followed you down here."

"But if you came straight from the mainland, how is it that I did not meet you in the way?" asked O'More suddenly, a strange suspicion of even Paudeen's simple faith passing rapidly through his mind.

"Because I didn't come from it at all, at all," the boy answered curtly. "It is yonder they're staying now," he added, pointing to Achill Island; "and they do say in the house that Clare Isle will be the next to follow."

"And is it to tell me this that Mistress Hewitson is about to honor me with a visit?" Roger answered bitterly. "The formality, methinks, was hardly needed, considering all that her father has robbed me of already."

"Sorrow know, I know what she will be wanting; but this at all events I know for certain, that it is for nothing but what is good and kind," said Paudeen; adding immediately afterward in a musing tone, "though how she can be what she is, considering the black blood that is running in her veins, it needs greater wits than I can boast of to be able to discover."

"Well, well," said Roger, "I believe you are about right there, Paudeen. So now go back at once, and say to Mistress Hewitson that she shall be obeyed, and that I will return to Clare Island in time to receive her at the landing-place."

"Let me go back also," said Nellie, in a smothered voice. "If I and my grandfather have brought this danger to your door, it is only just that we should share it with you."

"Share it. Mistress Netterville? Nay, but you would double it!" cried O'More vehemently. "In the face of anything like real, present danger, I should infallibly lose my life in anxiety for yours. In point of fact, however, he added, seeing that she still looked distressed and anxious; in point of fact, the danger (whatever it is) cannot be immediate, since it is evident that Mistress Hewitson expects by her intended visit to give me such information as may enable me to evade it. Possibly she has heard further details concerning those plans of the old man, her father, at which yesterday she obscurely hinted. It may even be, as Paudeen seems to think, that they intend to put an English garrison on the island, and she may hope to soften matters for us by giving me this previous notice. Any way, I entreat you not to be over anxious; for though I acknowledge that we live in perilous times and places, yet still, and if only for that very reason, it behoves us to keep our common sense intact, and not to allow it to be scared by every passing cloud that seems to threaten us with storm."

After such words as these, Nellie felt there was nothing for it but to land the moment the boat reached shore, and Roger helped her out with a sort of graceful tenderness, which seemed tacitly to ask forgiveness for the constraint he had been compelled to put upon her inclinations.

Then he pointed to a scarcely discernible path among the brushwood, and said hastily:

"That path will take you straight to the church. If any one ask you any questions, the watchword is, 'God, our Lady, and Roger O'More.' Farewell! Get as near the altar as you can; tell them not to wait for me, but I will be back in time to fetch you."

He waited one moment, to make sure that she understood him, then pushed the boat out into deep water, and without even venturing to look back, pursued his way diligently homeward.

The breeze had died away, so that he would, he knew, be infinitely longer in returning to Clare Island than he had been in coming from it. As he passed Paudeen, he had half a mind to hail him, but reflecting that he would probably lose more time by the stoppage than he could gain by the boy's assistance, he changed his mind and went on his way alone. It was hot and weary work, but he put all his strength and will to it, and did it in a shorter time than he had expected. Not, however, before his presence was apparently sorely needed; for just as he neared the harbor, the deep, angry bay of the wolf-dog Maida reached his ear. This was followed by a woman's voice, endeavoring probably to soothe the dog, and this again by a long, shrill whistle which came like a cry for aid across the waters. Thus urged, O'More pulled with redoubled energy, and next moment was in the harbor. A corragh, ownerless and empty, was lying loose beside the pier, and a few yards from the landing-place he saw a girl standing motionless as a statue, one hand raised in an attitude of defence, confronting Maida, who, with head erect and bristling hair, seemed to bid her advance further at her peril. Had she attempted to retreat, had she shown even a shadow of timidity or of yielding, the dog would undoubtedly have torn her into pieces; but, with wonderful nerve and courage, she had so far stood her ground, and, rebuked by her stillness and unyielding attitude, Maida, up to that moment, had fortunately contented her sense of duty by keeping a close watch upon her proceedings. Horrified at the sight, and dreading lest Maida might mistake even the sound of his voice for a signal of attack, Roger hastily leaped on shore. Henrietta heard him, and without even daring to turn her head in his direction, whispered softly:

"Call off your dog—for God's dear sake, call her off at once!"

Roger made no reply, (for, in fact, he did not dare to speak,) but he made one bound forward and placed himself between her and her foe. Maida instantly abandoned her threatening look to greet her master, and for one half-moment he employed himself in caressing and calming down her fury. Then he turned eagerly to Henrietta:

"How is this. Mistress Hewitson? For God's sake, speak! The dog has not injured you, I trust?"

Henrietta did not at first reply. She was as white as ashes, and her eyes glittered with a strange mingling of courage and of desperate fear. "Send away the dog," she cried at last; "send away the dog. I cannot bear to see her," and then burst into tears.

Roger said one word, and Maida instantly flew toward the castle. He was about to follow in the same direction in order to procure some water, but the girl caught him by the arm, and held him so that he could not move.

"Calm yourself, I entreat you," he said, fancying she was still under the influence of terror. "No wonder that even your high courage has given way. Let me call Nora. She will help you to compose yourself."

"Call no one," Henrietta gasped.

"Call no one; but tell me, is there not a priest and some other outlaws in hiding on the chieftain's rock?"

"What then?" he asked, the blood suddenly rushing to his heart as he thought of Nellie.

"What then?" she repeated fiercely; "because, (oh! that I had known it but an hour ago,) because death is there, and treachery and woe! But whither are you going?" she cried, following him as he broke suddenly from her grasp, and began to retrace his way toward the pier.

"Whither? whither?" he answered, like one speaking in his sleep. "There, of course. Where else? My God, that I should have left Nellie there!"

"The girl!" cried Henrietta; "and you have been there already, and have had time to row all this way back? My God, then it will be too late to save her. The church must be in flames ere now."

O'More made no reply, but leaped at once into the boat. "What do you want?" he asked, almost savagely, as Henrietta followed him. "What do you want here—you, the child of her assassin?"

"I want to save her, and, still more, to save my father, if I can, from this most fearful guilt," she answered promptly. Roger made no further opposition. Once fairly out of harbor, he rowed with all the energy of despair, and Henrietta helped him nobly. They were obliged to trust entirely to their oars, and the delay was maddening. Roger never cast a single glance toward the spot where all his soul was centred, but Henrietta could not resist a look once or twice in that direction.

Suddenly she cried out.

"What is it?" he asked nervously; "what is it?"

"They have fired the church," she said, in smothered tones. "There is a cloud of smoke; and now—my God!—a jet of flame going through it to the sky!"

He made no reply, but he bent to the oar until the bead-drops of mingled agony and toil stood thick upon his brow.

"God help them! They must be trying to escape," she muttered yet again, as something like a shot or two of musketry reached her ear.

Faster he rowed, and faster. The boat leaped like a living thing along the waters. They were close to the cliff at last. Overhead, the sky was hidden by a canopy of heavy smoke, with here and there a streak of fire flashing like forked lightning athwart it. Underneath, the water lay black as ink, in the reflection of the clouded heavens, as the boat rushed through it. One more effort, and they were in the cove—another, and they were flung high and dry upon the beach. Roger jumped out without a word. Was he in time? or was he not? His whole soul was engrossed in that fearful question.

"What are you going to do?" asked Henrietta, uncertain as to what her own share in the enterprise was to be. He had been searching in the bottom of the boat for something; but he looked up then with a kindling eye, and said:

"Will you be true to the end?"

"So help me God, I will!" she answered in that quiet tone which tells all the more of steady courage that it has no touch of bluster in it. He had found what he wanted now—a cutlass and a coil of rope—and answered rapidly:

"Take the boat out of this, then, and wait beneath the cliffs. Wait till I come, or until yonder tower falls, as fall it must, and soon. After that, you may go home in peace. Yes, peace! For happen what may, your soul, at any rate, will be guiltless of this day's murder."

He shoved the boat back into deep water as he finished speaking, and then, without even looking back to see if Henrietta followed his directions, strode rapidly up the cliffs.

Chapter XI.

Happily unconscious of the peril by which her own life was so speedily to be placed in jeopardy, Nellie stood for a few minutes after Roger left her, watching his progress through the water, and speculating anxiously enough upon the nature of the summons which had been delivered to him by Paudeen. In spite of his apparent coolness, there had been something in the way in which he had almost forced her to leave him—something in the haste with which he had given her his last directions—something (if it must be confessed) in the very fact of his having rushed off without even a parting word or look, which made her suspect the danger to be more real and immediate than he wished her to suppose it. And now, as she watched him bending to the oar as if his very life depended on his speed, suspicion seemed all at once to grow up into certainty, and she bitterly regretted the shyness which had prevented her insisting on returning with him to the island. Regrets, however, were now in vain, and remembering that, if she delayed much longer, she would in all probability be too late for Mass, and so lose the only object for which she had remained behind, she turned her face resolutely toward the path pointed out by Roger. It was less a path indeed than a mere narrow space left by the natural receding of the rocks and loose boulders, which lay scattered about in all directions. Such as it was, it led Nellie in a zigzag fashion upward toward the cliffs, turning and twisting so suddenly and so often, that she could hardly ever see more than a yard or two before her, while the boulders on either side, being generally higher than her head, and the intervals between them filled up with tall heather and scrubby brushwood, she might as well, for all that she could have seen beyond, have been walking between a couple of stone walls. The congregation had in all probability already reached the church, or else they were coming to it by another path; for not the sound of a voice or of a footstep either before or behind her could she hear, though she paused occasionally to listen. Once indeed, but only once, at a sudden opening among the boulders, she fancied she saw something like the glistening of a spear in the brushwood underneath, and a minute or two afterward the air seemed tremulous with a low sighing sound, as if some one were whispering within a few yards of her ear. Nevertheless, when she paused again in some trepidation to reconnoitre, everything seemed so lonely and so still around her, that she was obliged to confess that her imagination must have been playing her sad tricks. The light which she had seen was, in all probability, a mere effect of sunshine on some of the more polished rocks, while the sough and sigh of the waters, as they lapped quietly on the beach below, might easily have assumed, in that distance and in the calm summer air, the semblance of a human whisper. Once she had satisfied herself upon this point, she resolved not to be frightened from her purpose by any nervous fancies; and stimulating her courage by the reflection that, if an enemy really were lurking near, her best chance of safety would be the church, in which her countrymen and women were already gathered, she toiled steadily upward until she reached the platform upon which it was erected. A sudden turn in the path brought her face to face with it almost before she fancied that she was near, and she only comprehended how heartily she had been frightened on the way, by the sense of relief which this discovery imparted. It was a low, mean-looking edifice enough, with the hermit's cell built aslant against the wall, and forming in fact a kind of porch, through which alone it could be entered. From the moment it first came in sight, the path had narrowed gradually until there was barely room at last for the passing of a single person, and while it appeared to Nellie to descend, the rocks on either side rose higher, slanting even somewhat over, so as partially to impede the light. From this circumstance she was led to fancy that both cell and church had been built originally below what was now the present surface of the land, a fact which, joined to its desolate, ruinous condition, might easily have pointed it out to Roger as a fitting place for the concealment of his friends. The low door of the porch was closed and fastened upon the inside, so that she was obliged, very reluctantly, to knock on it for admittance. A moment afterward she heard the sound of footsteps, the door was drawn back an inch or two, and some one from behind it whispered in Irish, "Who are you, and for whom?"

"For God, our Lady, and Roger O'More," Nellie promptly answered.

"Enter, then, in the name of God," the voice replied; and a strong hand being put forth, she was drawn within the building as easily and unresistingly as if she had been a child, and the door was again closed behind her. The cell into which she had been thus unceremoniously introduced was very dark, and she could only just perceive that the person who had played the part of porter was a tall, soldierly-looking fellow, and therefore, she concluded, one of the outlaws, of whose residence in the building Roger had informed her.

"You have been long a-coming," said the man. "Why is not the chieftain with you?"

"How do you know that he brought me hither?" asked Nellie, startled by the knowledge he seemed to have of her proceedings.

"We keep a good look-out seaward upon Sunday mornings," he answered significantly. "Why did he go back?"

"A message—summons from the island," said Nellie; not well knowing how much or how little it would be prudent to communicate. "It was nothing of any consequence, I believe; and he said you were not to wait. He will probably be here before all is over."

"Good," said the man; "then follow me." He went on as he spoke, Nellie stumbling as well as she could after him in the dark, until they reached the thick matting of dried grass which separated the church from the porch outside. Here the descent became so sudden that she would inevitably have been precipitated face foremost into the midst of the congregation, if her conductor had not caught her by the arm in time to prevent this catastrophe, and landed her safely on the other side. The interior of the building, as Nellie saw it in that dim light, had a much nearer resemblance to a ruinous barn than to a place of Christian worship. As Roger had already told her, it had been so long dismantled and forgotten as a church that the people had come to look upon it simply as a storehouse for their winter firing, a fact amply attested by the piles of drift and brushwood which rose in all directions, blocking up the narrow windows, and forming a gigantic stack against the wall behind the altar. This latter was of stone, facing the door by which she had just entered, and so placed that there was a considerable distance between it and the wall beyond.

In this desolate-looking building about twenty or thirty people were assembled, most of them women and young girls, with a sprinkling of old men and half-a-dozen younger ones, in whom Nellie fancied she recognized the outlawed soldiers of the royal army. Two or three of these last stole a curious glance upon her, as she moved onward toward the altar; but the greater part of the congregation were so absorbed in earnest and loudly-uttered prayer, that they seemed absolutely unconscious of the entrance of a stranger. Passing quietly, so as not to disturb them in their devotions, Nellie made her way to a spot from whence she had a full view of the priest as he sat, a little on one side, engaged in hearing the confessions of those who presented themselves for that purpose. He was in truth a hero in Nellie's eyes—the best of all heroes—a Christian hero. He had stood by that brave old bishop who had gone to death for an act of patriotism which, in the old heroic days of Rome, would have set him as a demigod upon pagan altars. Quiet and self-possessed, he had knelt, amid the thunders of the battle-field, to hear the confessions of the wounded soldiers. He had plunged into the fell atmospheres of plague and fever, braving death in its worst and most loathsome forms in the exercise of his ministerial functions. He had buried the dead—he had consoled the widow and orphan, made such by the reckless cruelty of man; and now, when he had exhausted all the more heroic forms of service to his Lord, he had come hither, like that Lord himself—like the good Shepherd of the Gospel—to gather up the young lambs into his arms, and to comfort a conquered and stricken people; to pour the consolations of religion upon hearts wrung and disconsolate in human sorrow; to preach of heaven to men forsaken of the earth, and to teach them, houseless and hapless as they were, to lift up those eyes and hands, which had been lifted in vain to their brother man for mercy, higher and higher still, even to that Almighty Father to whose paternal heart the life of the very least of his little ones was of such unspeakable and unthought-of value that not a hair might fall from one of their heads without his express permission. Thoughts like these passed rapidly through Nellie's mind as she watched the old man bending reverently and compassionately to receive, in the exercise of his ministerial functions, each new tale of sin or sorrow which, one after another, the poor people round him came to pour into his sympathizing ear.

We have called him "old," for his hair was white and his face was ploughed into many wrinkles; yet Nellie could not help suspecting that the look of wearied, patient age upon his features was less the effect of years, than of the toil and suffering by which those years had been utilized and made fruitful in the service of his Master. Altogether she felt drawn toward him by a feeling of reverent admiration, which would probably have found vent in words, if he had not been so completely occupied in his ministerial duties as to make it simply impossible to interrupt him. For in a congregation deprived, as this had been, of a pastor for many months, there was of course much to be done ere the commencement of the Sunday service. There were confessions to be heard, and infants to be baptized, and more than one young couple—who had patiently awaited the coming of a lawful minister for the reception of that sacrament—to be united in holy wedlock. At last, however, all this was over, and Nellie had just made up her mind to go and speak to him in her turn, when, to her infinite annoyance, he rose from his place and commenced robing himself at the altar. Kneeling down again, therefore, she endeavored to withdraw her thoughts from all outward things, in order to fix them entirely upon the coming service. In spite, however, of her most earnest efforts, she felt nervous and unhappy at the prolonged absence of O'More, and she could not help envying the people round her, as with all the natural fervor of the Celtic temperament, they abandoned themselves to prayer; prostrating, groaning, beating their breasts, and praying up aloud with as much naive indifference to the vicinity of their neighbor, as if each individual in presence there imagined that he and his God were the sole occupants of the church. Poor Nellie could obtain no such blest absorption from her cares. Her eyes would glance toward the door for the coming of Roger, and her ears would listen for his footsteps; once or twice, indeed, she felt quite certain that she heard him moving quietly behind the screen of matting, which shut in the church from the porch outside, and became, in consequence, nervously anxious to see him lift it and take his promised place beside her. He never came, however, yet the sounds continued, accompanied at times by a slight waving of the screen, as if a hand had accidentally touched it; and this occurred so often that Nellie began at last to be seriously alarmed. She thought of Paudeen's mysterious message to his chieftain, and her own half extinguished fancy of having seen a spear among the brushwood recurred vividly to her mind. What if she had seen rightly, after all? What if an enemy were really lurking in the neighborhood; or, worse still, crouching behind that terrible screen, ready to massacre the congregation as they passed through it to the open air after service? The thought was too terrible for solitary endurance, and she was just about to lessen the burden by imparting it to her nearest neighbor, when she found herself forestalled by a heavy, stifling cloud of smoke, which rolled suddenly through the church and roused every creature present to a sense of coming danger. There was a rustle and a stir, and then they all stood up, men and women and little children, gazing with wild eyes and whitened faces on each other, uncertain of the "how or from whence" of the threatened peril.

The priest alone seemed to pay no attention to the circumstance; nevertheless he felt and comprehended far better than they did the nature of the fate awaiting them, and hurried on to the conclusion of the Mass, which was by this time, fortunately, well-nigh over.

He had hardly finished the communion prayer before the heat and suffocation had become unbearable. In an agony of terror, the people made a rush to the gates, and tore down the screen of matting which separated the church from the porch beyond.

Then arose a wild cry of despair, filling the church from floor to ceiling—the cry of human beings caught in a snare from whence, except by a cruel death, there was no escaping. The porch was already a blazing furnace, filled almost to the roof, with fagots burning in all the fury that pitch and tar, and other combustibles flung liberally among them, were calculated to produce. These, then, were the sounds which had disturbed Nellie during Mass. The enemy had profited by the rapt devotion of these poor people to build up, unheard and unsuspected, their death-pile in the porch, after which doughty deed they had retired, closing the gates behind them, and trusting the rest to the terrible nature of the ally they had so recklessly invoked.

To attempt a passage through that sea of fire in its first wild fury would have been instant death; and amid the cries of women and children, many of whom were well-nigh trampled to death beneath the feet of their fellow-victims, the crowd swayed backward.

Then came another horror. An unhappy girl, one of the foremost of the throng, in her eagerness to escape, had rushed so far into the porch that her garments caught fire, and, mad with pain and fear, she flung herself face downward upon a heap of driftwood near her. It was all that was needed to complete the work of destruction. The wood, dry and combustible as tinder, ignited instantly, and in two minutes more was a mass of flame. In vain some of the men, with the priest at their head, leaped on it in a wild effort to trample it out before it could spread further. As fast as it was stifled in one place it broke out in another, the subtle element gliding along the walls and seizing upon stack after stack of wood with an ease and speed that mocked at all their efforts to extinguish it. No words can paint the horrors of the scene that followed! Heavy volumes of black smoke, ever and anon rolling upward from some new spot upon which the fire had fastened, at times shut out the light of day, and made the darkness almost palpable to the senses. Fire, bright and angry, flashing at first here and there at intervals, like forked lightning, through the gloom; then coming thicker and quicker, as it grew with what it fed on, hurrying and leaping in its exultant fury, licking up and devouring with hungry tongues all that opposed its progress—now spreading itself in sheets of molten flame, now contracting into red, hissing streams, bearing a terrible resemblance to fiery serpents, but never for a moment slackening in its work of woe, winding hither and thither, and in and out, and fastening with all the malice and tenacity of a conscious creature upon everything combustible within its reach, until the very rafters overhead were wreathed in flame—and underneath that awful canopy the panting, shrieking crowd, struggling in that sulphurous atmosphere of smoke and fire, rushing backward and forward, they knew not whither, in search of a safety they knew too well they could never find; for even while obeying the animal instinct to fly from danger, there was not a creature there who did not feel to the very inmost marrow of his being, that unless a miracle were interposed to save him, he was doomed then and there to die.

Nellie was the only person in the church, perhaps, with the sole exception of the pastor, who made no vain effort at escaping. Driven by the swaying of the others, after their first rush to the door, backward toward the altar, she had remained there quietly ever since, praying, or trying to pray, and shutting eyes and ears as much as might be to the terrible sights and sounds around her. Accident had, in fact, brought her to the only spot in the building where safety was for the moment feasible.

The altar was built, as we have already said, of stone, and being placed at some distance from any of the walls, the space in front, though stifling from heat and smoke, was clear of fire, and consequently of immediate danger.

Hither, therefore, the priest, who, having done all that man could do toward the stifling of the flames, now felt that another and a higher duty—the duty of his priestly office—must needs be exercised, endeavored to collect his flock, and hither, at his bidding, one by one they came, every hope of rescue extinguished in their bosoms, and scorched, and bruised, and half-suffocated as they were, lay down at his feet to die. There was no loud shrieking now—the silence of utter exhaustion had fallen upon them all, and only a low wail of pain broke now and then from the white, parched lips of some poor dying creature, as if in human expostulation with the sputtering and hissing of the flames that scorched him. Once, and only once, a less fitting sound was heard—a curse, deep but loud, on the foe that had so ruthlessly contrived their ruin.

It reached the ear of the priest as he stood before the altar, sometimes praying up aloud, sometimes with look and voice endeavoring to calm his people, waiting and watching with wise, heroic patience for the precise moment when, all hopes of human life abandoned, he might lead them to thoughts of that which is eternal.

But that muttered curse seemed to rouse another and a different spirit in his bosom, and filled with holy and apostolic anger, he turned at once upon the man who spoke it.

"Sinner!" he cried, "be silent! Dare you to go to God with a curse upon your lips? What if he curse you in return? What if he plunge you, for that very word, from this fire, which will pass with time, into that which is eternal and endures for ever? O my children, my children!" cried the good old man, opening wide his arms, as if he would fain have embraced his weeping flock and sheltered them all from pain and sorrow on his paternal bosom, "see you not, indeed, that you must die!—with foes outside, with devouring flames within, all hope of life is simple folly. Die you must. So man decrees; but God, more merciful, still leaves a choice—not as to death, but as to the spirit in which you meet it. You may die angry and reviling, as the blaspheming thief, or you may die (O blessed thought!) as Jesus died—peace in your hearts and a prayer for your very foes upon your lips. Have pity on yourselves, my children; have pity on me, who, as your pastor, will have to answer for your souls, as for my own, to God—and choose with Jesus. Put aside all rancor from your hearts. Remember that what our foes have done to us, we, each in our measure, have done by our sins to Jesus. Pray for them as he did. Weep, as he did for your sins (not his) upon the cross, and kneel at once, that while there yet is time I may give you, in his name and by his power, that pardon which will send you safe and hopeful to the judgment-seat of God."

Clear, calm, and quiet, amid the confusion round him, rose the voice of that good shepherd, sent hither, as it seemed, for no other purpose than to perish with his flock; and like a message of mercy from on high his words fell upon their failing hearts. They obeyed him to the letter. Hushed was every murmur, stifled every cry of pain, and, prostrate on their faces, they waited with solemn silence the word which they knew would follow. And it was said at last. With streaming eyes, and hands uplifted toward that heaven to which he and his poor children all were speeding, the priest pronounced that Ego te absolvo, which speaking to each individual soul as if meant for it alone, yet brought pardon, peace, and healing to them all. Something like a low "Amen," something like a thrill of relief from overladen bosoms, followed; and then, almost at the same instant, came a loud cry from the outside of the church—a crashing of doors—a rush—a struggle—a scattering of brands from the half-burned-out fagots in the porch—and, blackened with smoke and scorched with fire, O'More leaped like an apparition into the midst of the people. A shout almost of triumph greeted his appearance, for they felt as if he must have brought safety with him. It seemed, in fact, as if only by a miracle he could have been there at all. Unarmed as he was, he had rushed through the English soldiers, and they, having all along imagined him to be in the church with their less noble victims, were taken so completely by surprise that they suffered him to pass at first almost without a blow. By the time they had recovered themselves, their leaders had staid their hands. It was better for all their purposes that he should rush to death of his own accord than that they should have any ostensible share in the business. No further opposition, therefore, being offered to his progress he easily undid the gates, which were only slightly barricaded on the outside, and having cleared the porch at the risk of instant suffocation to himself, he now stood calling upon Nellie, and vainly endeavoring to discover her in the blinding atmosphere of smoke around him. She was still where she had been from the beginning—at the foot of the altar, faint and half-dead with heat and fear. But the sound of his voice seemed to call her back to life, and, with a cry like a frightened child, she half-rose from her recumbent posture. Faint as was that cry, he heard it, and catching a glimpse of her white face, rushed toward her. In another moment he had her in his arms, wrapped carefully in his heavy cloak, and shouting to all to follow and keep close, he rushed behind the altar.

Half an hour before this had been the hottest and most dangerous position in the church, but O'More had well calculated his chances. The real danger now was from the roof, which, having been burning for some time, might fall at any moment. Below, the fire, having rapidly exhausted the light material upon which it had fed its fury, was gradually dying out, and boldly scattering the fagots upon either side as he moved on, Roger made his way good to the only spot in the building from whence escape was possible. Here the floor sank considerably below the general surface, and dashing down a heap of brushwood which still lay smouldering near, he lay bare an aperture effected in the wall itself, and going right through it to the cliffs beyond.

Through this he passed at once, carrying Nellie as easily as if she had been a baby, and landing her safely on the other side. The people saw, and with a wild cry of hope rushed forward. Even as they did so the roof began to totter. They knew it, and maddened by the near approach of death, pressed one upon another, blocking up the way and destroying every chance of safety by their wild efforts to attain it.

In the midst of this confusion, a shower as of red-hot fire poured down from the yielding rafters. Then came another cry (oh! so different from the last)—a cry of grief and terror mingled—then a crashing sound and a heavy fall—and then a silence more terrible even than that cry of terror—a ghastly, death-like silence, only broken by the hissing and crackling of the flames above, and the deep sough of the sea below—and all was over.

To Be Continued.

Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.

Science And Faith.

Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion,
By M. Guizot.

Conclusion.

III.

The way is found. Man has the gift of believing not only the things he sees and knows by his own intellect, but also those he does not see and which he learns through tradition. He admits, he affirms with confidence the facts which are asserted by others, when the witnesses seem competent and reliable, even in cases where he cannot verify their truth or submit them to a rigid criticism. Thus in the authority of witnesses we have that which constitutes faith; faith properly so called, which is the belief in the divine truths, as well as purely human faith, which is confidence in the knowledge of another. Both require the same act of intelligence; but, if it concerns the affairs of this world, the authority of the witness is easily established, for he has only to prove his competence and his veracity; while for superhuman things it is necessary that he himself should be superhuman, that he should prove it to us, that we should feel by the way he speaks that he knows and has dwelt in the heaven of which he is speaking, and that he has descended from it. If he is only a man, he is without a claim upon us. Manifest signs of his mission and authority are necessary; such signs must be unusual and incomprehensible; they must command respect and force conviction; they must be miraculous facts entirely beyond mere human power.

Such is the supreme and necessary condition for every solution of these natural problems, or, what amounts to the same, for any great and true religion. The appearance of a being eminently divine is necessary, who will show the character of his mission and his right to claim obedience by miracles. Miracles and religion are, then, two correlative terms, two inseparable expressions. Do not try to preserve one and get rid of the other; the attempt will fail. If you could effect this divorce, both would disappear. Religion without miracles is only a human doctrine; it is simply philosophy, which has no right to penetrate the mysteries of the infinite, and which can only speak in hypotheses, without force and without authority.

There is no way, then, to help it: miracles must be admitted. This is the great stumbling-block.

It is said: "That would be allowed when the world was young, and when man himself, ignorant and a novice, had not demonstrated for so many centuries the stability of nature's laws! Then he could suppose that there was some hidden power, which at certain times and for certain ends played with these laws and suspended them at will; but to-day, in this advanced age, wise as we are, how can we be expected to bend our enlightened reason to these uncertainties? how can we give science these injurious contradictions?"

Yes, you believe yourselves to be extremely learned. You think that you thoroughly understand the laws of nature, because from time to time you have wrested some of her secrets from her; and these being always more or less marvellous, you immediately conclude that she has spoken her last word! Strange assumption! Look behind, and you are right, you have accomplished an immense distance. Look ahead, and the end is as far as in the days of your fathers, the distance to be overcome remains always the same, you have not advanced a single step. Far from adding to your presumption, the progress of your knowledge should rather make you feel more keenly your ignorance. The more conquests you make, the more your radical impotence is shown. Yet you presume to say that the laws of this world allow or do not allow this or that, as if you completely understood them, while at every moment new and unexpected facts, which are granted by yourselves, defeat your calculations, mock your predictions, and derogate from laws which you proclaim absolute and eternal!

No one doubts that a general and permanent order reigns in this world; but that this order is inexorably determined in its trifling details, that nothing can alter it, that it will remain the same for ever, you cannot say any more than can we; or rather, you, as well as we, are living witnesses that an unbending mechanism does not govern all things here below.

Indeed, what do you do, you, a feeble atom, an imperceptible creature, when you forbid the Sovereign Master the great ordainer of things, the least deviation, the slightest infraction, of the laws he has made? Do you not violate these laws so far as you are able every day, every hour, and in every way? The plant that the natural order would cause to bloom in summer, you cover with flowers in winter; you change the flavor and the form of the fruit, and the color of the flowers; you bend the twigs and branches, and make them grow against their nature. And it is not only over vegetation and inanimate objects that you exercise your caprices. How many living beings have you transformed, and completely altered their natural mode of life! What unexpected missions and what strange destinies has your fancy made them undergo!

It may be said that these are only little miracles; but after all, how do the greatest ones differ from them? They are both infractions upon the apparent order of nature. Is the real order subverted by this? Is the relation of cause and effect broken because our gardeners derive and propagate from a graft new and innumerable varieties? No; and since this is true, there can be no good reason for refusing to admit a series of deviations above these of every-day experience. The miraculous cures, the wonderful transitions from extreme feebleness to health, and the intuitive power of a saint, which enables him to read the very thoughts of men, can all be effected without compromising or menacing the universal order. Everything depends upon the degree of power you grant the Author of these acts, to him who, holding all things in his hand, can make the exception as easily as the rule.

There is but one way to deny absolutely the possibility of miracles, which has been in all times by instinct and by nature affirmed by the human race, and that is to suppress God and profess atheism, either atheism simply in its gross crudity, or that more delicate and better disguised form which finds favor in our times, and which honors God by pronouncing his name, but gives him no other care than the servile protection and the dull supervision of the worlds he has created, but which he does not govern. If this is the way in which God must be considered, if fatalism is the law of the world, let us speak no more of miracles or of the supernatural; for this is already decided, and there can be no discussion about it. If, on the contrary, entering into yourselves, you feel that you are intelligent and free, ask yourself, Where did I get these wonderful gifts, liberty and intelligence? Do you get them from yourself? Are they born in you and only for you? Do you possess them completely? Do they not emanate from a higher, more perfect, and more abundant source, in a word, from God himself? Then, if God, if the Omnipotent, is also the sovereign intelligence and the sovereign freedom, how do you dare to forbid him to mingle with affairs here below, to follow with attention the beings he has created, to watch over their destiny, and to declare his wishes to them by striking manifestations of his power? He can most certainly do this, for he is free and all-powerful. With the idea of God thus presented to the mind, a complete and living God, the question is completely transformed. And it must be acknowledged that we have no longer to demonstrate the possibility of miracles: it is for our opponents to prove their impossibility.

But the great critics of to-day, at least those who have the most ability, have carefully refrained from attempting this task. They attack supernatural facts in a different way, not as being impossible in themselves, but as lacking proof: in the place of openly denying them, they try to weaken the authority of those who attest them. What testimony would then be destroyed by them? Let it be noted that in the historical statement of natural facts, even those which are extraordinary and more or less uncertain, the testimony of men, sustained and strengthened by constant tradition, is allowed to be sufficient; and, indeed, to what, in most cases, would our historical knowledge amount, if this sort of proof were not admissible? But for supernatural facts they are far less accommodating. Many other guarantees are demanded. They require ocular proof, which must be made in a proper way and duly announced by them to be certain. This is the condition upon which they offer to yield; without it, there is to be no belief. Whence it would follow, that, whenever the Divinity proposed to do anything beyond the ordinary laws of nature, it would be bound to give these opponents notice, so that they could produce their witnesses. The work would then proceed in their presence, and, when the miracle was accomplished, they would immediately begin their statement. Perhaps our readers may think that we are trying to excite a laugh at their expense, or, at least, that we are exaggerating. Such is not the case; we are only echoing their own words, and we could quote from the very page where this system is set forth as the sole method of establishing the truth of miracles. However, it is useless to dwell upon this way of asking for impossible proofs and proclaiming a readiness to believe, but placing one's belief upon unheard-of conditions. This is only a subterfuge, an attempt to evade what they dare not solve, and an effort to destroy in practice that which they seem theoretically to concede.

There are others more frank, less diplomatic, and perhaps also less learned, who call things by their right name, and who loudly declare a new dogma as the great principle of reformed criticism, and this is the complete denial of supernatural facts. The manner, the air, and the lofty disdain with which they look down upon those simple souls, who are credulous enough to believe that the Almighty is also intelligent and free, should be seen. They announce that all intercourse between them and us is broken, that we have nothing to do with their books; they do not care for our praise or for our censure, since they do not write for us. One is almost tempted to repay their disdain with interest; but there is something better to be done. We have just shown that man, with his limited power and liberty, can modify the laws of nature. Let us see, now, if God in his infinite sphere has not the same power, and if there is not some well-known and striking example of it.

There is one instance which both in time and by its evidence is the most convincing of all. It is not one of those facts which we have learned by narration or by testimony, whether written or traditional. All narratives can be contested and every witness can be suspected; but here the fact is its own witness, it is clear and irrefutable. It is the history of our first parents, of the commencement of the human race; for our race has had a commencement, of this there can be no question. No sophist would dare to say of man, as they have said of the universe, that he has existed from all eternity. On this point science confirms tradition, and determines by certain signs the époque when this earth became habitable. Upon a certain day, then, man was born; and he was born, as it is hardly necessary for us to say, in an entirely different manner from that in which one is born to-day. He was the first of his kind: he was without father or mother. The laws of nature, on this occasion at least, did not have their effect. A superior power, working in his own way, has accomplished something beyond these laws, and in a more simple and prompt manner, and the world has seen an event take place which is evidently supernatural.

This is the reason why some savants have taken so much pains to find a plausible way to explain scientifically, as a natural fact, this birth of the first man. Some would persuade us that this enigma is explained by the transformation of species— a singular way of avoiding a miracle, only to fall into a chimera. Indeed, if anything is proved at all and becomes more certain as the world grows older, it is that the preservation of species is an essential principle of all living beings. You may try, but you cannot succeed in infringing upon this law. The crossings between closely allied species, and the varieties produced by them, are smitten after a certain time with sterility. Are not these impotent attempts, these phantoms of quickly disappearing creations, the manifest sign that the creation of a really new species is forbidden to man? Yet would they try to convince us that in the earliest ages, in times of ignorance, these kinds of transformations were accomplished without any effort; while to-day, notwithstanding the perfection of instruments and of methods, notwithstanding the aid of every sort that we draw from science, they are radically impossible! Try, then, to make a man. But, we are answered, this is a matter of time. It may be so. But only begin, let us see you at work, and you can have as much time as you please. Take thousands of centuries, and yet you can never transform the most intelligent baboon into a man, even of the most ignorant and degraded type.

This dream having disappeared, another is invented. The absurdity of the transformation of species is admitted, and another theory is adopted, that of spontaneous generation. The intention is to establish that man can be born either with or without parents; that nature is induced by various circumstances to choose one of these two ways, and that one is not miraculous more than the other. It is well known what vigorous demonstrations and what irrefutable evidence science brings against this theory; yet, in spite of its absurdity, it has been often reproduced and considered worthy of refutation. But supposing that doubt was yet possible, and that we could believe in the birth of little beings, without a germ, without a Creator; now could this mode of production aid us in solving the question of the birth of the first man? What is the highest pretension of the defenders of spontaneous generation? In what state would they put man in the world? As an embryo, a foetus, or as one newly born? For no one is permitted to believe in the sudden birth of an adult, in possession of a body, of physical power, and of mental faculties. Yet this is exactly the way in which the new inhabitant of the earth must have been created. He must have been born a man, or else he could not have protected himself, he could not have found food to prolong his life, and he could not have perpetuated his race as the father of the human family. If he had been born in the state of infancy, without a mother to protect and nourish him, he would have perished in a single day of cold or hunger. If this theory, then, had been able to answer the tests to which it has succumbed, it would yet be of no service in clearing up the question we are discussing. The only way to solve it satisfactorily is to admit frankly that it must have been something superior and unknown to the laws of nature. In order to explain the appearance of the first man upon this earth, the man of Genesis is necessary, made by the hand of the Creator.

This is not a jeu d'esprit, an artifice, or a paradox. It is the undeniable truth. It must be admitted by every one who will reflect. Every sound mind, which is in good faith and which carefully considers this question, is invincibly compelled to solve it in the way that it is solved in the book of Genesis. There may be doubts about the complete exactness of certain words and details; but the principal fact, the supernatural fact, the intervention of a Creator, reason must accept as the best and most sensible explanation, or rather as the only possible explanation of that other necessary fact, the birth of an adolescent or an adult man.

Here, then, we have a miracle well and duly proved. If this were the only one, it would be sufficient to justify belief in the supernatural, to destroy every system of absolute fatalism, to demonstrate the freedom of the Divinity, and to assert his true position. But it may be well for us to say, if since the existence of the human race it had received no proof of the care of its Creator other than this miraculous act in which it was created, if no intelligence, no help, or no light had come from above, what would it know now of the mysteries of its destiny, of all these great problems which beset it and occupy its attention? The creation of man does not give us the reason why he was created. This is not one of those miracles from which the light bursts forth to flood the world. It is a manifestation of divine power: it does not teach us the divine will. We shall see another fact, on the contrary, which, though not less mysterious, will speak far more clearly. This did not happen amid the fleeting shadows of chaos upon the scarcely hardened earth; but in a completely civilized world, and at a historical period which can be fully investigated, this new miracle took place. The clouds will disappear, and the broad day will gladden all hearts. Blessed Light! Long promised and awaited, the complement of man's creation, or, rather, a true and new creation, bringing to humanity, with love and heavenly pardon, the solution of every question, the answer to every doubt!

During the long series of centuries which separates these two great mysteries, these two great supernatural facts, the creation and the redemption of man, the human race, guided by its own light, has not for a moment ceased to search after divine truths and the secret of its destiny. But it has sought ignorantly, it has groped in the dark, and it has wandered astray. In every part of the world the people solved the enigma in their own fashion, each making its own idol. It is a sad, an incoherent spectacle; and of all these curious and imperfect forms of worship, which sometimes become impure and disgusting, there is not one which gives a complete and satisfactory answer to the moral problems with which one is harassed. Their pretended answers really answer nothing, and are but a collection of errors and contradictions.

Has man been created for such ends as these? Has not his Creator, in forming him with his hands, in teaching him by an intimate communication the use of his faculties, made him to see, to love, and to follow the truth? Yes; and this explains the instinctive gleams of truth that are found in every portion of the race; but man has received liberty at the same time that he received intelligence, and it is this supreme gift which assimilates him to his Author, and imposes, together with the honor of personality, the burden of responsibility. He was tried, he had the power to choose, and he chose the bad; he has failed, he has fallen. Clearly the fault was followed by the greatest disorder and distress, and the offended Father withdrew his grace from the disobedient son. They are separated: the erring one, because he fears his Judge; the Judge, from his horror of the sin; but the father lies hid beneath the judge. Will the exile, then, be eternal? No; for the promise is made to the very ones whose fault is punished, and the time of mercy is announced in advance, even at the moment of chastisement.

Every tie is not yet broken between the Creator and this unfaithful race. A single bond is maintained, a handful of worthy servants preserve the benefit of his paternal intercourse. Who can doubt this? For several thousand years the entire human race, in all places and in every zone, bows before the works of nature, deifies them, and adores them. How, then, can it be explained that one little group of men, and only one, remained faithful to the idea of a single God? It may be answered that this is something peculiar to one race; that it embraces more people than is generally supposed; that it is true of all the Semitic tribes as well as of the Hebrews. A truly impartial and exceedingly learned philology, recently published, affirms the contrary. It is demonstrated that the Jews alone were monotheists. Reason certainly cannot forbid us to believe that this unique and isolated fact was providential, since it was at least most extraordinary and marvellous. Thus, while the ancient alliance between man and his Creator continued in a single part of the globe, a part scarcely perceptible in the immense human family, while the divine truth, as yet veiled and incomplete, though without any impure mixture, is revealed as in confidence, and, so to speak, privately to the modest settlement chosen for the designs of God, all the rest of the world is abandoned to chance and wanders at random in religious matters.

Why, then, only in religious matters? Because it was in this that the fault took place. Man has foolishly wished to make himself equal to God in the knowledge of the divine, of the infinite, of those mysteries which no mind can fathom without God's assistance. It is another thing in regard to the knowledge of the finite, to purely human science. God is not jealous of this. What does he say in exiling and chastising the rebel? Work, that is to say, use not only your arms, but your mind; become skilful, powerful, ingenious; make masterpieces; become Homer, Pindar, AEschylus, or Phidias, Ictinus, or Plato. I allow you to do all, save attaining to divine things without my aid. There thou wilt stumble, until I send thee the help I have promised to show thee the way. Thy reason, thy science, and even thy good sense will not prevent thee from becoming an idolater.

Indeed, is it not remarkable that religion in the world of antiquity should be so inferior to the other branches of human understanding? Think of the arts, literature, philosophy; humanity cannot excel them. They were at the summit of civilization. All that youth and experience combined could bring forth of the perfect and the beautiful, you see here. These first attempts are the works of a master, and will live to the latest ages, always inimitable. But return for a moment, consider the various religions, question the priests. What an astonishing disparity! You would believe yourself to be among uncultivated people. Never were such dissimilar productions seen to spring from the same evil at the same time and in the same society. On one side, reason, prudence, justice, and the love of truth; on the other, a degrading excess of falsehood and credulity. It is true that, here and there, under these puerile fables, great truths shine forth; these are the remnants of the primitive alliance between God and his creature; but they are only scattered, and are lost in a torrent of errors. The great fault, the infirmity of these ancient religions, was not the symbolism which surrounded them, but their essential obscurity and sterility. These were not capable of saying a single clear and definite word in regard to the problems of our destiny. Far from making them clear to the great mass of men, they seemed rather to try to conceal them under a thick cloud of enigmas and superstitions.

This was, however, the only moral culture that the human race, evidently punished and separated from God, received for thousands of years. In the place of his priests it had philosophical sects, schools, and books to tell man his duty. But how many profited by this help? Who understood the best, the purest, and the greatest philosophers? How far could their warnings reach? Outside the limits of Athens, the words of Socrates himself could not penetrate to relieve a soul, to break a chain, or to make a virtue take root. Do we say his words? Why, even his death, a wonderful death, the death of a just man, remained unfruitful and ignored!

The time became critical; pagan society was entering upon its last phase and made its last effort; the empire was just born, and, although it may be said that it could boast, during its long career, of many days of repose and even of greatness, it was not without its revolting scenes; and one can say, without any exaggeration or partisan feeling, that from the reign of Tiberius it was shown by experience that all purely human means to elevate the race were visibly at an end. Then it was that, not far from the region where primitive traditions located the creation of man, under this sky of the Orient which witnessed the first miracle, a second was to be accomplished. A sweet, humble, modest, and at the same time sovereign voice speaks to the people of Judea in language before unknown; speaks words of peace, of love, of sacrifice, and of merciful pardon. Whence does this voice come? Who is this man who says to the unhappy, "Come to me, I will relieve you, I will carry your burdens with you"? He touches the sick with his hand, and they are cured; he gives speech to the mute; he makes the blind see and the deaf hear. As yet there is nothing excepting these things; but this man knows the enigma of this world completely; he knows the real end of life and the true means of attaining it. All these natural problems, the vexation of human reason, he resolves, he explains without an effort and without hesitation. He tells us of the invisible world; he has not imagined it, his eyes have seen it, and he speaks of it as a witness who had but lately left it. What he tells us is unassuming, intelligible to every one, to women, to children, as well as to the learned. How does he come by this marvellous knowledge? Who were his masters and what were his lessons? In his early childhood, before lessons and masters, he knew already more than the synagogue. Studies he never made. He worked with his hands, gaining his daily bread. Do not seek for his master upon this earth: his Master is in the highest of the heavens.

Is not this the witness of whom we have spoken above, the superhuman, the necessary witness for the solution of natural problems and the establishment of true religious dogmas? To say that such a man is more than a man, that he is a being apart from and superior to humanity, is not saying enough. We must learn what he really is. Let us open the candid narratives which preserve the story of his public mission, of his preaching though Judea; open the gospels, where the least incident of his acts, his words, his works, his sufferings, and his bitter agony are written. Let us see what he says of himself. Does he declare himself simply a prophet? Does he believe himself to be only inspired? No; he calls himself the Son of God, not as every other man, remembering Adam, could have been able to say it. No; he meant the Son of God in the exact and literal interpretation of the word, son born directly of the father, the son begotten of the same substance.

Try to force the meaning and distort the texts to make them say less than this, but you cannot succeed. The texts are plain, they are numerous, and without ambiguity. There are only two ways in which the divinity of this man can be denied: either his own testimony must be attacked, if the gospels are admitted to be true; or the gospels themselves must be rejected.

In order to attack his own evidence, it must be supposed that, by a lack of sagacity, he in good faith formed a wrong judgment about his own origin, or perhaps better, by a deceitful intention, he knowingly attributed to himself a false character. This being, whose incomparable intelligence forces you to place him above humanity, this is he who is not capable of discerning his father. And on the other side, this inimitable moralist, this chaste and beautiful model of all virtues, this is he whom you suspect of a disgraceful artifice. There is no middle course: either this mortal must be the Son of God, as he has declared, or you must put him in the last rank of humanity, among the innocent dupes or the cunning charlatans.

Or, on the contrary, do you wish to attack the gospels? Nothing is less difficult, if you remain at the surface. Arm yourself with irony, provoke the smile, treat everything in a superficial manner, and you will certainly gain the sympathy of the scoffers. But if you wish to investigate the things, and to take, in the name of science, an impartial view, you will be compelled to acknowledge that most of the facts in the gospels are historically established; that they are neither myths nor legends; that the place, the time, and the persons are absolutely put beyond all doubt. What right, then, has any one to refuse credence to this series of facts, where another series, which is admitted, is sustained by no better witnesses, nor more direct proofs, nor any other superiority, except a pretended probability which is determined by each for himself? Nothing can be more arbitrary and less scientific than this way of making a choice, deciding that this evangelist should be implicitly believed when he is mentioning such a speech, but that, when he tells us what he saw himself, he is no longer trustworthy; and that this one, on the contrary, falsifies the discourses that he reports, but that he announces certain facts with the certitude of an ocular witness. All this is only pure caprice. But it is certain that the gospels, however closely they may be examined, bear the criticism successfully, and ever remain imperishable. What book of Herodotus or of Titus Livius carries such an intrinsic evidence of good faith and veracity as the recitals of St. Matthew or of St. John? Are you not charmed with these two apostles, who frankly tell us what they have seen with their eyes and heard with their ears? If you, who were not there and who saw nothing of these things, believe that you can give them a lesson, and tell them, in virtue of your scientific laws, how all these things happened without their understanding them, and by what subterfuges their adorable Master deceived them, it will not be only the orthodox and faithful who will resent and controvert your boldness—voices that you dread more, from the midst of your own ranks, will openly proclaim your falsehoods. [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 101: "The human soul, as some one has said, is great enough to enclose every contrast. There is room in it for a Mohammed or a Cromwell, for fanaticism together with duplicity, for sincerity and hypocrisy. It remains for us to ascertain if this analogy should be extended to the Founder of Christianity. I do not hesitate to deny it. His character, when impartially considered, opposes every supposition of this kind. There is in the simplicity of Jesus, in his artlessness, in his candor, in the religious feeling which possessed him so completely, in the absence of all mere personal designs, of every egotistic end, and of all cunning; in a word, there is in all that we know concerning him something which entirely repels the historical comparisons by which M. Rénan has allowed himself to be governed."—M. Edmond Scherer, Mélanges d'Histoire Réligieuse, pp. 93, 94.]

After all, suppose they were deceived, that the hero of this great drama was only a skilful impostor, what do you really gain by it? The miracles cannot be thrown aside. On the contrary, you have one miracle more, and one which is more difficult than all the others to explain. It is necessary to account for this most wonderful fact, that cannot be suppressed by any critic, the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Take every sentence of the gospels, accept these supernatural facts without reservation, the cures, the exorcisms, the elements stilled, the laws of nature violated or suspended: all these things are not too much, rather they had hardly enough to make us understand the triumphant progress of such a doctrine, in such a time, and among such a people. Nothing less than miracles could transform the world in this manner, changing all the opinions commonly received, completely altering the moral and social state of the people, and not only giving them purer and more enlightened views, but truths which were entirely unknown to them. If, then, you tell the truth, if this stupendous revolution rests upon a comedy, if we must consider the partial miracles false which surround and explain the principal miracle, which precede and seem to prepare and open the way for the great miracle, what will be the result? You have not destroyed, and cannot destroy, the principal miracle: it has become still more miraculous.

IV.

Let us not lose sight of our argument. We were seeking a practical and popular way to solve the great problems of our destiny, and we have proven that human science alone is unequal to this task. We have seen that there is only one way for man to attain this end, that satisfactory solutions can only be derived from faith, that wonderful gift which under the authority of a superhuman witness makes us believe with certitude things which neither the eyes of the body nor the eyes of the mind could immediately comprehend. Has the witness which lies at the foundation of Christian convictions the wished-for authority? In other words, is it truly divine? We believe that we have established it, and the most hasty reading of a single page of the Bible will demonstrate it far more clearly than we have done. See also the admirable harmony of the Christian system, and the responses, as clear as they are sublime, it gives to questions so long unanswerable. It is by its capacity to penetrate mysteries to read the invisible, to explain the obscure, not less than by its miraculous victory, that Christianity demonstrates both the true character of its origin and the sincerity of its divine Founder.

We remember on this subject some moving sentences that we will be permitted to quote. They are from an author who recently received an eloquent tribute of regrets and praises, and who, for the past twenty years, has been remembered with grief by all the friends of sound philosophy. In a well-known lecture, when considering these same problems of human destiny, M. Jouffroy spoke thus:

"There is a little book that is taught to children, and upon which they are questioned in the church. Read this little book, which is the catechism. You will find in it a solution of all the questions I have asked—of all, without an exception. Ask a Christian the origin of the human race, what is its destiny, and how it can attain it, and he can answer you. Ask that poor child, who has scarcely thought of life and its duties, why he is here below, what will become of him after death, and he will make a sublime answer which he may not fully comprehend, but which is not the less admirable. Ask him how the world was created and for what end; why God has put animals and plants upon it; how the world was peopled, if by one family or by several; why men speak different languages, why they suffer, why they combat, and how all these things will end; and he knows it all. Origin of the world, origin of man, questions about the different races, destiny of man in this life and in the other, relation of man to God, duties of man toward his fellow-men, rights of man over creation, he is ignorant of none of these things; and as he becomes matured, he will not hesitate to take advantage of his natural and political rights, for he knows the rights of the people, for these come, or, as it were, flow of themselves, from Christianity. This is what I call a great religion. I recognize by this sign that it leaves none of the questions which interest humanity without an answer." [Footnote 102]

[Footnote 102: Mélanges Philosophiques, par M. Th. Jouffroy. Vol. i. 1833, p. 470.]

We love to read again these words of a master and a friend, who in his youth was nourished with Christian truths, and who, perhaps, would have tasted them again if the trials of life had been prolonged for him. Without doubt, it is necessary to avoid indorsing opinions which are no longer our own sentiments; but certainly it can be permitted to preserve a faithful and complete remembrance of their spirit. Even at the time when M. Jouffroy doubted, when he left his pen and told us with assurance how Christian dogmas would die, there would have been but very little necessary to teach him to his cost how they perpetuate themselves! Faith has its evil days; its ranks seem decimated and its army dissolved, but it can never perish. In order to replace deserters, to recruit its strength unceasingly, has it not the sorrows and miseries of this world, the need of prayer, and the thirst of hope?

Let us leave this sweet and profound thinker whose brilliant career we love to trace; let us return to that great and firm soul who now engages our attention, and to whom we are attached by so many friendly ties and remembrances. Without having followed him step by step, we have not lost sight of him. We have taken a hasty glance at his work in trying to express its spirit. We must now return to each of these meditations in detail. What things have escaped us! What brilliant passages, what keen observations, what profound thoughts! At most, we have only taken account of that part of the book where the limits of science, the belief in the supernatural, and especially the marvellous harmony between Christian dogmas and religious problems, that are innate to man, are treated with so much wisdom and authority. That which M. Jouffroy, in the remarks we have quoted, indicates in a single glance, M. Guizot establishes with convincing arguments by comparing each dogma with the natural problem to which it corresponds. No one has yet so accurately explained the harmonious relation of these questions and these answers. There are two morceaux which demand particular attention: they are the two meditations on the revelation and inspiration of the holy books. There are here ideas and distinctions of rare sagacity which point out what justly belongs to human ignorance, without allowing the reality of inspiration of the Bible to suffer the slightest suspicion. But the chief triumph of this work, that which gives it at once its most charming color and its sweetest perfume, are the last two meditations, God according to the Bible, Jesus Christ according to the Gospels.

These two pictures are in as different styles as the subjects they contrast. Nothing could be bolder, more striking, more truly Biblical, than the portrait of the God of the Hebrews; of that God "who has no biography, no personal events," to whom nothing happens, with whom nothing changes, always and invariably the same, immutable in the midst of diversity and of universal movement. "I am he who is." He has nothing else to say of himself; it is his definition, his history. No one can know more of him, even as no one can see him. And if he were visible, what a misfortune! His glance is death. Between him and man what an abyss!

It is a long distance to traverse between such a God and the God of the New Testament—from Jehovah to Jesus Christ. What novelty, what a transformation! The solitary God goes out from his unity; he completes everything, yet remains himself; the provoked God lays aside his anger, he is affected, he is pacified, he becomes gentle, he gives man his love, he loves him enough to redeem his fault with his Son's blood, that is, with his own blood. It is this victim, this Son, obedient even unto death, that M. Guizot endeavors to paint for us. Sublime portrait, attempted many times, but always in vain! Shall we say that he has succeeded in this impossible task? No; but he has made a most happy effort. He makes us pass successively before his divine model, by showing the attitudes, if we may be allowed the expression, which enable us to see the most touching aspects of this incomparable figure. Sometimes he places him amid his disciples only, that chosen and well-loved flock; sometimes in the Jewish crowd in the Temple, at the foot of the mountain, or on the border of the lake; sometimes among the fishermen or the sedate matrons; sometimes with artless children. In each of these pictures, he gathers, he brings together, he animates by reuniting them, the scattered characteristics of Jesus Christ. His sober and guarded style, powerful in its reasoning, brilliant in its contests, seems to be enriched with new chords by the contact with so much sympathy and tender love. It is not only the impassioned eloquence, but it is a kind of emotion, more sweet and more penetrating, that you feel while reading his thoroughly Christian pages.

We understand the happy effect that this book has already produced upon certain souls. Its influence, however, cannot descend to the masses. Its tone, its style, its thoughts, have not aspired to popular success; but from the middling classes and the higher circles of society, how many drifting souls there are to whom this unexpected guide will lend a timely aid! Such a Christian as he is must work this kind of cure. He is not the man of the workmen; he has neither gown nor cassock. It is a spontaneous tribute to the faith, and more than this, for it declares that he too has known and vanquished the anxieties of doubt. Every one, then, can do as he has done. No one fears to follow the steps of a man who occupies such a position in the empire of thought, who has given such proofs of liberty of spirit and of deep wisdom. It is not a slight rebuke to certain intelligent but careless Catholics to see such an example of submission and faith come from a Protestant.

There is yet a greater and more general service that these Meditations seem to have fulfilled. During the eight or ten months since they were published, the tone of antichristian polemics has been much depressed. One would have expected a manifestation of rage, but there has been nothing of the kind. The most vehement critics are reserved, and their attacks have principally consisted in silence. Hence a sort of momentary lull. Many causes, without doubt, contributed in advance to this result, if it were only the excess of the attack and the impertinence of certain assailants; but the book, or to speak more properly, the action of M. Guizot, has, in our opinion, its own good part in this work. So clear and vigorous a profession of faith could not be lightly attacked. In order to answer a man who frankly calls himself a Christian, it would be necessary to have resolved and to declare openly that one is antichristian; but those who are, no longer care to acknowledge it. It is well known that our day is pleased with half-tints; it has a taste for shadows, and is always ready to strike its flag when it sees an opponent's colors. Christianity itself gathers some profit from the little noise that is made about these Meditations. It is not the least reward of their author. May he continue in the same tone, compelling his adversaries to persevere in their silence. He will embarrass them more and more, while he will always add fresh courage and power to those who are sustaining the good cause.

Saint Mary Magdalen.
From The Latin Of Petrarch.

The following lines were written by the great Italian poet, Petrarch, on the occasion of a visit to Sainte-Baume, near Marseilles, where tradition points out the tomb of Saint Mary Magdalen. He inscribed them on the grotto, in which she is said to have passed the last thirty years of her life.

Dulcis amica Dei, lacrymis inflectere nostris,
Atque meas attende preces, nostraeque saluti
Consule: namque potes. Neque enim tibi tangere frustra
Permissum, gemituque pedes perfundere sacros,
Et nitidis siccare comis, ferre oscula plantis,
Inque caput Domini pretiosos spargere odores.
Nec tibi congressus primos a morte resurgens
Et voces audire suas et membra videre,
Immortale decus lumenque habitura per aevum,
Nequicquam dedit aetherei rex Christus Olympi.
Viderat ille cruci haerentem, nee dira paventem
Judaicae tormenta manus, turbaeque furentis
Jurgia et insultus, aequantes verbera linguas;
Sed maestam intrepidamque simul, digitisque cruentos
Tractantem clavos, implentem vulnera fletu,
Pectora tundentem violentis candida pugnis,
Vellentem flavos manibus sine more capillos.
Viderat haec, inquam, dum pectora fida suorura
Diffugerent pellente metu. Memor ergo revisit

Te primam ante alios; tibi se priùs obtulit uni.
Te quoque, digressus terris ad astra reversus,
Bis tria lustra, cibi nunquàm mortalis egentem
Rupe sub hâc aluit, tarn longo tempore solis
Divinis contenta epulis et rore salubri
Haec domus antra tibi stillantibus humida saxis,
Horrifico tenebrosa situ, tecta aurea regum,
Delicias omnes ac ditia vicerat arva.
Hìc inclusa libens, longis vestita capillis,
Veste carens aliâ, ter denos passa decembres
Diceris, hìc non fracta gelu nec victa pavore.
Namque famem, frigus, durum quoque saxa cubile
Dulcia fecit amor spesque alto pectore fixa.
Hìc hominum non visa oculis, stipata catervis
Angelicis, septemque die subvecta per horas,
Coelestes audire choros alterna canentes
Carmina, corporeo de carcere digna fuisti.

Translation.

Sweet friend of God! my tears attend,
Hark to me suppliant and defend—
O thou, all-potent to befriend!

Not vain that care thou didst accord—
Thy hands, uplifted o'er thy Lord,
Upon his head sweet odors poured,

And touched his feet with unguents rare—
The kiss of love imprinted there—
And wiped them with thy beauteous hair.

Not vain, when he in majesty
Rose up from death, 'twas given to thee
The first to meet, to hear, to see.

This glory did the Lord divine,
The Christ august, to thee assign,
Made this unending splendor thine.

Unto his cross he saw thee cling,
Unawed by threat and buffeting—
The taunts the furious rabble fling;

For him he saw thee lashed with scorn,
Yet clasping, faithful and forlorn,
Those feet with nails now pierced and torn.

He watched thy tear-drenched face below—
Thy bosom stricken in thy woe—
Thy long fair hair's dishevelled flow.

All this he saw, while from his side
His other loved ones scattered wide,
And left alone their Crucified.

'Twas therefore, mindful of those sighs,
He, deigning from the tomb to rise,
Sought his first welcome from thine eyes.

And heavenward when from earth he sped,
Through thrice ten years for thee here spread
A feast by angels ministered.

This rugged cave obscure and lone,
Black rock-dews dripping down the stone.
For thee a regal palace shone.

No fields with harvest wealth besprent
Accord such manna as was sent;
Thy needs did heavenly gifts content.

Here through December's frost and sleet.
Thy long hair, falling to thy feet.
Enrobed thee in a robe complete.

No fear appalled; love made thee bold;
Love sweetened sufferings manifold.
The rock, the hunger, and the cold.

Here, hid from mortal eyes, to be
Cheered with celestial company.
Angelic bands encompassed thee.

And still a dweller in our sphere.
Seven hours each day rapt hence, thine ear
The alternate choirs of heaven could hear.

C. E. R

Glimpses Of Tuscany.
Santa Maria Del Fiore—The Duomo.

I.

We are approaching Florence by rail from Pisa, a dismal, dripping February morning. It is twelve years since I first saw that famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I came suddenly upon it, as I was trying to find my way alone to the opera at the Pergola, the first night I got to Florence. I shall never forget the impression it made on me—an honest, original impression, for I had never read or heard of the Piazza and its wonders. I only knew Giotto by his "O." Orgagna, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi, were names utterly unknown. But the beauty and immensity of that mighty square, asleep in the starlight, overwhelmed me. It was like a step, unawares, from time into eternity. No Pergola that night for me. I crept back to the hotel, bewildered and awed into something like earnestness; for the Lord seemed enthroned in that consecrated place, and I was afraid of him as he sat there, stern, conscious, omnipotent.

But I was younger then; disposed to go into raptures over everything artistic, especially Italian art. The decade between thirty and forty diminishes one's enthusiasm dreadfully. I am almost afraid to meet my old favorite now, lest the spell of a fine remembrance should be broken for ever. But the train is rushing on, the road curves, and there's the same Duomo, looking as if Our Lady of Flowers herself had settled down on the city, with Giotto's campanile, like an archangel, standing guard beside her. There she sits in her gray mantle, grayer through the mist and snow, queen of all the landscape—grander, lighter, lovelier than ever.

Here we are at the station, and now driving past the baptistery; but, far or near, that cupola ever full in view like a guardian presence. You do not wonder here, as before Saint Peter's, what has become of the cupola; you are not obliged to fall back a league to see what is nearly overhead. Nave, transept, and tribune go swelling up, with buttress and demi-cupola diminishing as they ascend, and all converging into one enormous drum from which springs the central dome. Dante could see it from his chair in its very shadow. Arnolfo and Brunelleschi may see it from their seats of marble scarce twenty yards from the foundation-stone. Angelo may see it from his home in Santa Croce. The masons of Fiesole can see it from their hills, the peasants of San Casciano from their vineyards; and, far down the Arno, the boatmen from Pisa look up to it as they plod wearily along.

I am domesticated in Florence; the slow Tuscan spring is passing into summer; and, from being simply a joy, this great cathedral has become a study. Arnolfo, son of Lapo, or Cambio, was the great stone-poet who traced that ground-plan, itself an epic. He was commissioned by those wonderful republicans to construct a church, as worthy as man could make it of the glory of God and the dignity of the city of Florence. The inclination of Arnolfo's genius was toward the Gothic; but he was a many-sided and myriad-minded man. His walls of Florence suggest the Egyptian, his court of the Bargello the Saracenic, his Palazzo Vecchio a perfectly new idea. He has all the versatility of Shakespeare. Arnolfo's first conception of Santa Maria del Fiore may still be seen in fresco, copied from the last wooden model, in the Spanish Cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Up to the first cornice, the cathedral, as it now stands, is almost as purely Gothic as the campanile; and, by reference to the fresco, you will perceive that Arnolfo's original idea was to carry this Gothic treatment up to the very cross that crowns the lantern. For instance, the lantern in the fresco is without either ball or scroll, the clerestory buttressed, and with pointed instead of circular lights, the windows of the cupola pointed. Yet, as it is certain that Arnolfo lived to finish the clerestory, and to unite (serrare) the smaller cupolas and tribunes, it is clear these variations in his plan, these departures from the pointed, these approximations to the round, were deliberately made by Arnolfo himself, or by his direction. As the work advanced, he felt that something more must be conceded to the coming cupola. It was not enough to have it octagonal instead of spherical, and enrich its eight marble ribs with Gothic tracery; the antagonism between the two styles must be met and softened from the start. See how gradually this is done, and at what an early stage these concessions begin. In the fresco, the blind arches, both over the lower tribunal windows and just under the lower tribunal cornice, are slightly pointed; in the building itself they are round; the niches above the cornice, also, are pointed in the picture and round-topped in the stone. It is more than probable that these concessions were dictated by the greater prominence which the cupola was assuming in Arnolfo's new vision of his temple. Now is it impossible, that he might have nearly anticipated the exact plan of the heir of his inspiration and partner of his glory? The tendency is that way. But, with the completion of the clerestory and the unification of the smaller cupolas, Arnolfo departs, and, after an interval of a century and a quarter, Brunelleschi enters.

There they are, seated side by side in marble, close to the stone that marks where Dante, too, sat gazing at their Duomo. Arnolfo looks more like a dreamer than a doer, although he was both; in Ser Brunelleschi's face there is more of the mathematician than the poet. He could never have traced that ground-plan, never have dreamed that shining archangel called the campanile; but he did what neither the pupil of Cimabue nor the son of Cambio could perhaps have managed as well, he built that matchless cupola. Brunelleschi had his one great dream, the solution of a vast and novel architectural difficulty. What Arnolfo had hinted became his grand ideal. He nursed his dream for years at Rome, communing with the spirit of classic art; at last he told his dream in Florence, and with infinite difficulty got leave to act it out. Since that noble carte blanche to Arnolfo, Florence had declined; she was no longer up to the proud standard of that earlier day. The superintendents are slippery and slow in engaging Filippo; and Filippo himself must finesse more than a little to secure the engagement. There is this difference, to be sure, that the Duomo was the culmination of Arnolfo's professional career and but the beginning of his successor's; that the latter, like all gallant adventurers, had to win his spurs before he could be fully trusted. Still, the two inseparable elements of self and gain are more conspicuous here than in the purer Christian ages, whose architects disdained or forbore to register their names; whose works preserve no personal memorial of their masters; "so that," says Vasari, "I cannot but marvel at the simplicity and indifference to glory exhibited by the men of that period." There is, unfortunately, no such simplicity to marvel at now.

As early as 1407, Filippo submitted an opinion to the superintendents of the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, and to the syndics of the guild of wool-workers, (powerful gentlemen in those days,) that the edifice above the roof must be constructed, not after the design of Arnolfo; but that a frieze, thirty feet high, must be erected with a large window in each of its sides. This suggestion, together with the additional thirty feet for the gallery, comprised the single, sublime conception to which the Duomo owes its crowning beauty; the rest of the task is chiefly mechanical. But such immense mechanics require immense genius. Filippo had supplied the idea, but there was no one found wise enough to execute it. The wardens and syndics were much perplexed; and Filippo, after laughing at them in his sleeve, returned to Rome. He had hardly gone before they wrote him to return. He came; and after patiently listening to the long array of difficulties which mediocrity always opposes to the inspiration of genius, admitted that the most enormous dome of ancient or modern times must present certain difficulties in its erection, like other great enterprises; that he was confounded no less by the breadth than by the height of the edifice; that if the tribune could be vaulted in a circular form, one might pursue the method adopted by the Romans in erecting the Pantheon; but that following up the eight sides of the building to a convergence, thus dove-tailing, and, so to speak, enchaining the stones, would be a most difficult and novel undertaking. "Yet"—and this touch is worthy of Arnolfo's age or any other—"yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God and the Virgin, I confidently trust that, for a work executed in their honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is now wanting, and bestow strength, wisdom, and genius on him who shall be the author of such a project." Nothing can shake Filippo's joyous trust in himself; he acts as if he carries a divine commission in his pocket to finish what Arnolfo began, and can therefore afford to laugh at all human appointments or interference. With amazing confidence and magnanimity, he concludes his interview with their worships by exhorting them to assemble, on a fixed day within a year, as many architects as they can get together; not Tuscans and Italians only, but Germans, French, and all other nations, "to the end that the work may be commenced and intrusted to him who shall give the best evidence of capacity." The syndics and wardens liked Filippo's advice, and would also have liked him to prepare a model for their edification. But with all his piety and self-reliance, Ser Brunelleschi was a Florentine like their worships, and therefore keen enough to keep his model to himself. It then suddenly occurred to these grave gentlemen that money might be an object to Filippo, as it occasionally is to other men; and so they voted him a sum, not stated by Vasari, but not large enough to justify his remaining in Florence. So back to Rome once more marches the Ser Brunelleschi.

Meanwhile that noble city of Florence has ordered her merchants resident abroad to send her at any cost the best foreign masters. In the year 1420, these best foreign masters, and best Italian masters besides, and the syndics and superintendents, and a select number of distinguished citizens, and little Filippo himself, just returned from Rome, are all assembled in the hall of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore. After listening to a hundred absurd plans, Brunelleschi unfolds his own at full length. Whereupon the assembled syndics, superintendents, and citizens, instead of being at all edified by his remarks, proceeded to call him a simpleton, an ass, a madman, and bade him discourse of something else. Which he, instead of doing, stuck to his point, and finally lost his temper and flew in their faces. Whereupon they called him a fool and a babbler; and considering him absolutely mad, arose against him as one man, and incontinently turned him out of doors by the head and heels. Imagine the rage of Arnolfo the Goth, after such treatment; or Angelo the mighty, stalking down the Via Romana; or Dante, wandering ghost-like into eternal exile! The indomitable, practical Filippo did none of these things, but prudently shut himself up at home lest people in the streets should call out, "See where goes that fool!" "It was not the fault of these men," says the sympathetic Vasari, "that Filippo did not break in pieces the models, set fire to the designs, and in one half-hour destroy all the labors so long endured, and ruin the hopes of so many years." But Filippo was less a poet, enamoured of an inward vision of beauty, than an architect determined to solve an architectural problem. Plainly enough, since Arnolfo had set the example in the clerestory, the windows of the cupola were also to be circular instead of pointed. His inventive faculties were therefore restricted to the organization of that vast dream, to the determination of the ascending curves and the conception of the lantern. It was not the offspring of his soul, but of his mind, that Filippo had offered the syndics and superintendents; and the inventor of new combinations and possibilities of matter is apt to possess a more elastic temperament than the creator of new forms of beauty. Instead of fretting himself to death or cultivating the princely revenge of silence, Filippo, strong in his mission and calculating on the proverbial caprice of his native Florence, began to experiment on individuals instead of assemblies; so successfully, too, that another session was soon convened. Profiting by discomfiture, Filippo modified his tactics. He salutes the superintendents as "magnificent signors and wardens," and condescends to be more explicit about his still hidden model. He even goes so far as to prove the dome-within-a-dome, which had so enraged their excellencies, a possibility. He spoke with such emphasis and confidence, that "he had all the appearance of having vaulted ten such cupolas." In a word, they surrendered at discretion; and, rather in despair than hope, made him principal master of the works. The man of talents was victorious where a mere man of genius would have been badly beaten. But—in these artistic complications there is always a but—Lorenzo Ghiberti, just famous for his doors of Paradise, was a favorite in Florence; so Florence resolved to associate Lorenzo with Filippo. This was a bitter pill to Ser Brunelleschi, but he swallowed it; and for two years they worked together at the twelve braccia to which their labors were limited by the wardens. But—there was also a 'but' on the right side—when the closing in of the cupola toward the top commenced, and the masons and other masters were wailing in expectation of directions as to the manner in which the chains were to be applied and the scaffoldings erected, it chanced on one fine morning that Filippo did not appear at the works. On inquiry, it turned out that he had tied up his head, called for hot plates and towels, and gone to bed complaining bitterly. An attack of pleurisy. Most inopportunely; for at this most critical moment in the enterprise the whole burthen fell on Lorenzo. Lorenzo was besieged by practical questions; Lorenzo was persecuted with a thousand interrogatories; Lorenzo waded completely out of his depth into a sea of troubles; the masons and stone-cutters came to a stand, and finally the work stood still. At this juncture, the syndics and wardens resolved to pay the sick man a visit. They condoled with him in his illness and also lamented the disorder which had attacked the building. "Is not Lorenzo there?" asked the sufferer. "He will not do anything without you," replied the wardens. "But I could do well enough without him," murmured the invalid. The wardens withdrew, and sent Filippo a prescription in the shape of an announcement of their intention to remove Lorenzo. Filippo instantly recovered, but only to find his rival still in place and power. Whereupon he made one more prayer to their worships, namely, to divide the labor as they divided the salary, and give each his own separate sphere of action. This was granted: the chain-work assigned to Lorenzo, the scaffolding to Filippo. The scaffolding proved a miracle of success, the chain-work a monument of failure. The wardens, and syndics, and superintendents, and influential citizens, fairly driven to the wall, made Filippo chief superintendent of the whole fabric for life, commanding that nothing should be done in the work save by his direction. How much richer the world would now be in every department of art, had half its men of genius but possessed a tithe of Brunelleschi's elasticity and determination.

Left to himself, Filippo worked with so much zeal and minute attention, that not a stone was placed in the building which he had not examined. The very bricks, fresh from the oven, are said to have been set apart with his own hands. So conscientious were the builders of those days when art was supreme and religion a practical inspiration. The energy and resources of this model architect are inexhaustible. Nothing escapes him. Outlets and apertures are provided, both in security against the force of the winds, and against the vapors and vibrations of the earth. Wine-shops and eating-houses are opened in the cupola. High over Florence, Filippo is undisputed lord and master of a small town of his own.

And so, for twenty-six years, they wrought under his eyes at this architectural miracle. He lived to see the lantern carried to the height of several braccia: it was not finished till fifteen years after his death. He left plans for the gallery, which were either lost, stolen, or destroyed. That great, broad belt of dingy brick and mortar clamoring to earth and heaven for completion, ruins the effect of the dome and gives the whole edifice a shabby appearance. Only one of the eight sides is finished. This was done in Carrara marble by Baccio d'Agnolo, and would have been carried all around the dome but for the interference of Michael Angelo, then omnipotent in Italy, who denounced it as a mere cage for crickets; adding that he himself would show Baccio what he ought to do. The old art-dictator made a model accordingly, which, after long debate, was rejected. So our Lady of Flowers still lacks her girdle. It is much to be regretted, since Michael could suggest nothing better, that he did not hold his peace. The present model may not be faultless, but it is infinitely better than nothing; and no one else has suggested anything as good. It was condemned, not as defective in itself, but unequal to the magnificence of the building; and, also, because it seemed to violate some secret purpose of Brunelleschi's in cutting off, as it did, the line of stones which he had left projecting. Be this as it may, Filippo's purpose has never been divined and never can be; all the plans of the great masters are lost; and there seems to be small use in continuing the interdict of a much over-estimated authority till doomsday. That cestus of alternate head and garland just under the colonnade is abominable, but it is difficult to see how the present design could otherwise be improved. It harmonizes with all the windows, and niches, and arches in the tribune; it relieves the blankness of the perforations, and is in sympathy both with the windows of the lantern and the upper window of the campanile. It is the sub-dominant without which the blended Gothic and classic is a discord. Arnolfo might have done it better, but no one else. It is a poem which Baccio was as well qualified to trace as any of the rest of them.

Apart from his glorious consummation of the Duomo, I do not like Brunelleschi. He did more than any other man to repel the Gothic influences, which, under Arnolfo and others, were penetrating Tuscany; he insured the triumph of the round arch over the pointed, and paved the way to the monstrosities of the Renaissance. But his cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore is the supreme miracle of architecture. It exceeds the cupola of the Vatican, both in height and circumference, by eight feet; and although supported by eight ribs only, which renders it lighter than that of Saint Peter's, which has sixteen flanked buttresses, is nevertheless more solid and firm. Unlike the Roman dome, it has stood unassisted and unstrengthened from the first; so firmly grounded by the forethought of Arnolfo, so closely knit by the energies of Filippo, that it has not sunk or swerved an inch in four centuries. The noblest speech that Buonarotti ever made was, that he would not copy, but could not surpass it; the finest compliment ever paid by one man of genius to another was his dying wish to be buried where he might arise, not in sight of his own Pantheon in the air, but in full view of the vaulted tribune of Santa Maria del Fiore. Another name, however, is associated with the growth of the Duomo—a name not inferior to either Arnolfo or Filippo. Just beside the vast cathedral is the wondrous bell-tower Giotto reared—his solitary, or only conspicuous architectural feat. Before Giotto's time, the modern painters copied nature about as closely as most actors and orators now do; that is, their men and women bore only a weak, conventional resemblance to humanity. The son of Bondone inaugurated the naturalistic movement which culminated in Da Vinci and Raphael; unquestionably a most honorable distinction. But what can all he ever painted, judged as a living fact, amount to when weighed against the startling splendor of this divine campanile? I have seen something of Giotto, far from all, but enough to know that, save as undeveloped germs and hints, his pictures are little more than crudities belonging to the infancy of art, amazing at his time, but not more than curious at ours. But this campanile, into which he suddenly ascended without an effort, is the transfiguration of architecture—the product of an art at its best and highest. Architecture never had advanced, never has advanced a step beyond it. It might be added, never can advance; for beyond a certain recognized point in the realization of beauty, human genius is not permitted to push its way. Vasari devotes thirty pages to the consideration of Giotto's pictures, and but one to the campanile. Yet these pictures are mouldering in convents or shrouded in chapels, or buried in dim galleries, scattered far and wide over the world; and, save over some ambitious student or patient virtuoso, they no longer exist as a spell or a power. But this lofty campanile is a perpetual influence; an influence as indestructible as the Iliad—a joy as unceasing as the joy of sunrise—the joy of a work that is perfection of its kind. So fair, so frail, and yet so firm! It does not need the glass case suggested by imperial condescension. It knows how to take the lightning and the storm. It knows how to bear the weight and thunder of its mellow bells. Its beautiful head is at home in the skies, and seems to belong to heaven as much as the flowers belong to earth.

Giotto's plan would have crowned it with a spire of a hundred feet; but, whether for true artistic considerations, or because it was Gothic, or because it was too expensive, succeeding architects have always advised its omission.

Besides its own independent loveliness, this bell-tower exercises an important influence over the group to which it belongs, not only by the development of form, but also by the subtler qualification of style. But for the pure Gothic of Giotto, the predominance of the round in the tribunes and cupola would overwhelm Arnolfo's pointed witchery beneath the clerestory. As it is, the supremacy of the classic at one end of the stately pile is balanced by the ascendency of the Gothic at the other. High up in air the pious rivalry between the two great styles is continued, each lifting its choicest offering to the very footstool of the Padre Eterno, each doing its best in honor of our Lady of Flowers.

The facade of Santa Maria is wanting, like her girdle. Giotto is said to have finished two thirds of it, subsequently torn down to be restored in a more modern style! The fresco in the cloister of San Marco gives only part of it, and I could make but little of that. As I remember the fresco of Arnolfo's facade, it was meant to be composed of statues, niches, and pillars—something as deep and rich as the façade at Pisa. Whoever may finish it, let us trust that the shallow mosaic of Santa Croce will be avoided. The baptistery completes this memorable group; faded, unattractive without, sombre and majestic within.

The interior of Santa Maria is a disappointment. Glorious stained glass, splendid arches, but none of the light, the joy, the shining paradise of Saint Peter's. If we may believe Vasari, the interior, like the exterior was to have been crusted with Florentine mosaic, even to the minutest corners of the edifice. But the days are dead when such a deed was practicable. Instead of colored marbles, we have a pale olive overspreading all the edifice; instead of the mosaic for which Filippo had provided iron supports, the lack-lustre frescoes of Vasari and his successors, which Florence ought to have summarily whitewashed, as suggested in Lasca's madrigal. Fortunately, these frescoes are the only pictures. Pictures in large churches are distracting and insignificant; and moreover, you can rarely more than half see them, try your best. Least of all, has a picture any business in a Gothic church. For my own part I would as soon see the pyramid of Cheops hung with pictures as the Duomo. In a church, you want all the superhuman you can get—nothing human but human souls. Angels and dragons and effigies are more in keeping there than the best statues; those ghostly groups and faces in the old stained glass look better than if they were a thousand times more natural. The old mosaics harmonize because they are not only typical, but imperishable as the structure itself. The decisive objection to a picture in a church is its apparent fragility.

The outer robes of our Lady of Flowers are dull with the dust and wear of five centuries. See how those new bits of marble which the workmen are inserting, green, white, and red, flash and sparkle in the sun! What a celestial vision it must have been when all that world of mosaic was fresh and stainless! But even as she is, faded and unfinished, what an invaluable possession! What would Florence be without it? It is a central magnet that holds together her present, past, and future; that unites all her children in one vast family, making her, in the truest sense of the word, a community. It stands before her everlastingly, a memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn, visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. For four centuries, the generations that people that fair amphitheatre have found it the most unchanging feature in their landscape. It is as much the portion of their lives as the stars, their river, or their own vineyards. In the first blush of every morning, it rises before the sun; and when the stars and moon are shining, the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore takes its place amongst them as part of the pageantry of the skies.

The Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England.
By An English Catholic.

Surrounded as we are on all sides by apostles of progress, ever ready to taunt and ridicule those who linger in the shadows of the past, it would be distressing indeed to Catholics in general, and especially to English Catholics, if they could with justice be reproached as stationary or retrograde. Happily they are of all men least open to the charge. They advance on a double line. They share in the common march of society; they adopt every latest improvement; they fully accept and reciprocate the blessings of civilization; but their religion also, which is in itself progress, increases and multiplies throughout the globe, and particularly in the British empire. It has derived strength from the world's social and political changes; it is inspired more than ever with the breath of freedom; and the very means which accelerate science and commerce supply it with wings and coat it with mail. It not only advances on a double line, but it has likewise a twofold nature and a duplex power. This wonderful religion is both old and new; it unites the weight and authority of age with the freshness and vigor of youth. To the English it is both ancient and modern. It was the venerable faith of their ancestors, and it is, by a gracious revolution in the moral world, the old religion revived, with all the charms of novelty—a second spring revisiting the long desolate and wintry land. It comes back to us with all its time-honored appliances; with its sacred symbols and solemn rites; its orders, congregations, and retreats; its colleges, institutions, poor schools, homes, orphanages, almshouses, hospitals, and libraries—but it comes, moreover, with means and advantages proportioned to its difficulties, and such as in old times it could not boast. It has now in its hands the mighty machinery of the press, with the Scriptures, the Missal and Church Offices in the vulgar tongue. It flourishes amid liberal institutions, and acquires no little vigor from free discussion, persuading where once it ruled. It affiliates to itself all physical truths, all discoveries in science, as affording fresh evidence of the power and wisdom of God. It engages in historical research with impartiality formerly unknown, relying on documentary proofs, and scrutinizing all that is legendary. It joyfully accepts and utilizes the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. It finds in them fresh instruments of good, new links to knit nations together in a common faith, swift convoys of Christian missions, and electric tongues of flame to spread the gospel of Christ.

During the last forty years the Catholic renaissance in England has been rapid beyond all that could have been expected or was even hoped. It is not to the emancipation act of 1829, to the increase of the episcopate in 1840, nor to the creation of the hierarchy in 1850, that this surprising growth is mainly to be ascribed. The removal of political disabilities gave Catholics in England, no doubt, a respectability and courage which they had not before; but they would still have continued, on the whole, a despised and scattered remnant—mere "pebbles and detritus" as Newman says, [Footnote 103] "of the great deluge"—if there had not arisen in the very heart of the Established Church a little band of learned and pious men, who, strong in genius and in prayer, valiantly defended many distinctively Catholic doctrines, and ended by professing openly or virtually their adhesion to our entire system of faith and morals. This it was which caused English Catholics, when they emerged, as it were, from the catacombs, [Footnote 104] to lift up their heads, to challenge a new investigation of the grounds of their belief, and to submit them confidently to every test that history, Scripture, reason, and experience could apply. The Tractarian movement infused fresh blood into the church's veins, and it has, during a period of thirty years, swollen our waters with a confluent stream.

[Footnote 103: Sermons on Various Occasions, p. 232.]

[Footnote 104: Card. Wiseman's Address to the Congress of Malines, p. 9.]

The tide thus set in a right direction does not cease to flow, and it is fed by sources external to ourselves. Scarcely a week passes but some persons knock at the gates of the church for admittance, who have learned the elements of Catholicism from alien teachers. Several high-church periodicals, widely circulated, such as the Union Review and the Church News, lay down, with extraordinary boldness and precision, doctrines which the so-called reformers labored to explode. Rumors are ever afloat of important conversions about to take place, and thus Catholics in England are constantly encouraged, while Anglicans are proportionally unsettled and alarmed. The Establishment is dying by the hands of its own pastors. Three hundred of them have quitted its pale, forfeited their position in society, forsaken a thousand comforts, prospects, and endearments, to follow the church in the wilderness and the pillar of fire. The largest-minded and the largest-hearted man Anglicanism ever produced, has long since taken his seat among the doctors in the true temple, and one whom Anglicans esteemed for his piety from boyhood upward, is now the primate of the English Catholic Church, and regarded among its bishops as facile princeps for learning and ability, both as a speaker and writer. The talents which were employed in promoting schism are thus turned into a healthier channel; and a multitude of able and ingenious converts in every literary guise operate beneficially on the public mind. The loud demand for unity of doctrine, a fixed standard of belief and morals, authority in matters of faith, primitive antiquity, asceticism, symbols, sacraments, and aesthetics, is being supplied. Catholic missionaries are covering the face of the land, and they are welcomed wherever they pitch their tent. Thirsting souls, weary of broken cisterns, gather round them, and ask eagerly for living water from deeper wells. Abbeys are raised on ancient sites; convent-walls crown the hills; church-bells tinkle in secluded vales; and in the towns and cities, fanes richly adorned and well served invite with open doors the docile to be taught and the penitent to be shriven. The genius of the two Pugins, the father and the son, has revived the love of mediaeval architecture; and the new churches vie with each other in majestic structure and ornate detail. The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land; the voice of the turtle is heard. The fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. [Footnote 105]

[Footnote 105: Canticles, ii, 11-13.]

What a contrast within forty years! then the heavenly dove flying over England scarcely found where her foot might rest. The waters were abroad on the whole land, and she returned into the ark. In 1830 only 434 priests ministered through the entire country; and these were attached, for the most part, to obscure chapels in low quarters of the town, or to gloomy, old-fashioned houses in the country. Four hundred and ten unsightly buildings were then called churches; and England (which in the olden time, before the Reformation, owned 56 convents of the Dominican order alone [Footnote 106]) could not at that date claim a single religious house consisting of men. Sixteen scanty communities of nuns there were, who sighed and prayed in secret, being but the skirts of the garment of the Lamb's Bride. A change has come over the scene; and how great that change is, the following table will in some degree show:

| In 1854. | 1864. | 1867.
Catholic clergy in England | 922 | 1267 | 1438
Catholic clergy in Scotland. | 134 | 178 | 201
Churches, chapels, and stations in England | 678 | 907 | 1082
Churches, chapels, and stations in Scotland | 134 | 191 | 201
Communities of men in England | 17 | 56 | 67
Convents in England. | 84 | 173 | 210
Convents in Scotland. | 0 | 13 | 17

[Footnote 107]

[Footnote 106: Fr. Palmer's Life of Cardinal Howard. Introd. 41-58.]

[Footnote 107: Statesman's Year-Book for 1867, p. 238. Catholic Directory, p. 267.]

In the Diocese of Westminster alone there are more than twice as many religious communities of women as there were in the whole kingdom (Ireland excluded) forty years ago. The population, it is true, multiplies rapidly and in an ever increasing ratio, but the spread of Catholicism does far more than keep pace with this advance. It outstrips it in a striking degree, and gives continual promise of further increase. The distance between churches lessens; the means of grace are more copiously supplied; the discipline of the church is more fully carried out; the prejudices of our foes are partly dispelled; their attacks become less violent; the press is more civil; the state more conciliating. In many localities, such as Bayswater, Notting-Hill, Kensington, Brompton, and Hammersmith, in the West of London, the number of Catholic churches, convents, and charitable institutions is greater than would be found over an equal area in many countries where the church is supreme. The number of persons attached to the congregation of the Oratory in Brompton exceeds 8000, and upwards of 13,000 attend the services of St. George's Cathedral in Southwark. The English "Reformation," happily, did only half its work, and the tap-roots of Catholicism have never been thoroughly eradicated from the popular mind. New suckers are ever springing up, and persistent culture soon obtains its reward.

The vast metropolis is not all included in one diocese. The Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Southwark both reside in London, and divide the pastoral care of the great city between them. One hundred and sixty priests, secular, regular, and unattached, minister under Dr. Grant, while 221, including Oratorians and Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo, serve under the primate. The average attendance of children at the poor schools of the Diocese of Westminster was, in the year 1857-8, 8648; and nine years later, in 1866-7, it amounted to 12,056. This increase sufficiently proves that great efforts are made to instruct the Catholic poor children in London. Many of them, especially those of Irish extraction, pass their days in rags, filth, and beggary, living like little "Arabs," as they are familiarly called. In 1866 it was estimated that from 7000 to 12,000 Catholic children were thus wandering through the streets of the capital; but the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and Archbishop Manning have produced the happiest results, and diminished the evils which want of funds and the difficulties of the case leave for the present without adequate remedy. It is certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the mind. It is almost as vain to teach religion without secular knowledge, as it would be presumptuous and profane to impart secular knowledge without religion. Nature and grace alike ordain that they should go together, and on this principle the Poor School Committee, or Council of Catholic Education, invariably acts.

There is in England, at the present moment, a strong tendency to compulsory education. The leading thinkers of the day incline to this plan, and press on the legislature the expediency of providing a state system of education, of which all the poor, Catholics as well as Protestants, should avail themselves. The secular instruction would, in this case, be common to all the children, while the religious instruction would be in the hands of the ministers of the several religions which the parents might profess. The Catholic bishops and clergy look with fear and suspicion on such a project, believing it impossible safely to separate secular and religious instruction. They are of opinion that the system would work badly, and prove a failure; that non-Catholic teachers would insensibly instil false doctrine and wrong views into the pupils' minds, and that the denominational system, which provides separate schools for each section of professing Christians, is the best, and, indeed, the only good one for Catholic interests. They point to Ireland, where the "national" education is regarded as a national grievance. They bid you remark how, in that valley of tears, both Catholics and Protestants separate their children if they can. They prove to you that, in national schools with Presbyterian masters, thousands of Catholic children are taught the Protestant religion from the lips of Protestant teachers. [Footnote 108] They complain that while the English receive from the state important help toward denominational education, to the Irish all such help is persistently refused.

[Footnote 108: Archb. Manning's Letter to Earl Grey, 1868, p. 22.]

It remains to be seen how far their remonstrances will be attended to, and how far the national education in Great Britain can be made to harmonize with Catholic. Happily, there is no disposition on the part of the state to force on any portion of the people a measure obnoxious to them; and the scheme of national education introduced into Ireland under the auspices of the Catholic and Protestant Archbishops of Dublin, (Drs. Murray and Whately,) having proved abortive, it is the less likely that Catholics in England will be obliged to accept any conditions to which they may be decidedly adverse.

There is, however, great difficulty in adjusting state concessions to Catholic wants and demands. It is almost impossible for Protestant rulers to understand our feelings, and they often run counter to them, even when they are trying to satisfy them with the best intentions. Thus, for instance, though the government has thrown open the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to Catholics, allowing them to matriculate and proceed to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, difficulties have recently been raised by ecclesiastical authority respecting their availing themselves of this opening. The Catholic bishops, in fact, have recommended parents and guardians not to send their sons and wards to Oxford and Cambridge; and though their advice does not amount to a prohibition, it has, nevertheless, a deterrent effect. Catholic noblemen and gentlemen of large property have, at present, no other means of giving their sons an education suited to their rank, and such as will form their minds and manners for parliamentary and diplomatic service, except by sending them to these universities, where science is, so far as they are concerned, entirely divorced from religion, and their personal faith is in great danger of being compromised. The Catholic colleges at Oscott, Ushaw, Stonyhurst, and the like, though admirable for ordinary purposes, do not meet these exceptional cases. They have not, they do not, and they cannot produce men equal to the times—men who carefully get up subjects, read much and study deeply, write and speak in public with authority, and leave deep "footprints on the sands of time." [Footnote 109] Such laborious and efficient servants of their country are not likely to be formed by any régime less strict and comprehensive than that of our universities; and the consequence is that, at this moment, there are about a dozen Catholic young men studying at Oxford (not to mention Cambridge) in spite of episcopal discouragement.

[Footnote 109: Dublin Review, October, 1867, p. 398.]

The principle of mixed education being absolutely condemned by the church, the want of a Catholic university in England is felt more and more. But it can only be the result of time, since the cost of endowments and professorships, not to speak of buildings, would, as yet, be out of proportion to the number of Catholics in England and the means they possess. The matter, however, is now under consideration at Rome, and it is expected that means will be devised shortly to meet the existing want. Before the Reformation, sixty-six universities covered Europe, and most of them sprang from small beginnings, and were built amid difficulties quite as great as any we shall have to encounter. [Footnote 110]

[Footnote 110: See Christian Schools and Scholars, vol. ii. chap. i. and ii.]

In the mean time, the government of Mr. D'Israeli favors, to a certain extent, the denominational system, and proposes [Footnote 111] to charter the Dublin Catholic University, to endow it from the public treasury, and to grant it the right of conferring degrees.

[Footnote 111: March, 1868.]

This plan, if carried into effect, will materially aid the Irish portion of the church, but will not supply the want of university education which is felt in England. Already the benefits resulting from the state endowment of Maynooth College for priests are clearly manifest, and the present race of ecclesiastics in Ireland differs entirely, in several important particulars, from that of the past generation. They are less Galilean than they were when educated in France, less disposed to accept of state pensions, improved in manners and appearance, more priestly, and perhaps more firmly attached to the Holy See. The old-fashioned "hedge-priest" has disappeared, and if one of our bishops now dines at the Castle in Dublin, he has not, as was sometimes the case in days of yore, to borrow a pair of episcopal small-clothes for the occasion.

The system of mixed education has not taken root in Ireland, though backed by all the influence of the state. The following table will prove that neither Catholics nor Protestants there approve it, and that, though they sometimes submit to it as a kind of necessity, they avail themselves of it as little as possible. The table exhibits the entire number of schools in Ireland under the control of the National Board, and it ought to be remembered that in these it is not allowable to teach the Catholic religion, to use Catholic emblems, to talk of the holy father, use the sign of the cross, or set up a crucifix or an image of Our Lady. [Footnote 112] The schools are, in fact, secular, so far as Catholic children are concerned, and their religious instruction is left to the zeal and labor of their own pastors.

[Footnote 112: Speech of Card. Cullen.]

Schools.

Catholic
Children.

Protestant
Children.

2,454 | with Catholic teachers. | 373,756 | none
2,483 | with Catholic teachers. | 321,641 | 24,381
1,106 | with Protestant teachers only | 29,722 | 114,726
184 | with Protestant teachers only. | none. | 18,702
131 | with mixed teachers. | 13,690 | 13,305

[Footnote 113]

[Footnote 113: Report of National Board of Education, 1866. Report of Meeting of Clergy of Dublin, 18th Dec. 1867, p. 14.]

In England, grants are made from time to time by the Privy Council of the Queen toward defraying the expenses of Catholic poor-schools, for it is only in a hobbling way that public opinion in this country moves toward religious and political equality. The oppression of minorities by majorities has been in vogue so many centuries, that the Houses of Parliament can with difficulty be induced to administer even-handed justice to all. The Poor-School Committee, composed entirely of Catholic noblemen and gentlemen, conducts the affairs of Catholic poor-schools with the concurrence of the bishops and clergy. The schools which are subsidized by government are subject also to government inspection. But this causes no inconvenience, because the inspectors are Catholics, approved by the bishops, and comfortably salaried by the state.

The reformatory schools are most useful and interesting institutions. They date from 1854, when a law was passed to the effect that juvenile offenders should, after a few weeks of imprisonment, complete their term of punishment in a reformatory approved by the secretary of state for the Home Department. By the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and others, reformatories were established for Catholic children, in order that they might be kept separate from those of other religions, and be duly instructed by Brothers of Mercy, or other pious and charitable persons, under the direction of a priest. Reformatory schools have been followed by schools of industry, to which magistrates send vagrant children, found by the police in the streets without shelter or home. These schools also are recognized by the secretary of state, and the members of the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul watch over the children's interests and provide, as far as may be, for their welfare.

Allied to these are such schools as St. Vincent's Home for destitute boys, at Hammersmith, [Footnote 114] where eighty poor boys are boarded, clothed, and educated for four shillings a week each, with thirty shillings on entrance for outfit, etc. The Catholics of England do not wait till they become a rich and powerful body before they engage in extensive works of charity. On the contrary, the number of their charitable institutions is immense, considered in proportion to their means.

[Footnote 114: Now removed to Fulham.]

During the Crimean war the want of Catholic chaplains in the army was felt painfully. Soldiers and sailors are, of all men, most careless about their souls, and Catholic soldiers were doubly abandoned in the hour of sickness and death, having no minister but a Protestant one to attend them, while in his ministrations they had no faith. A few volunteer chaplains were therefore allowed to accompany the troops, and this has led to their being regularly appointed, and to such chaplains being placed on an equality with the Protestant in rank, salary, and retiring pensions. Vessels, also, are moored in the great harbors and prepared for Catholic worship. A chaplain is specially appointed to the service of such ships, and to provide for the Catholic sailors' spiritual wants. The spirit of the Irish tar is no longer vexed with the thought that he must live, fight, and perhaps die for a government which abhors his religion, and deprives him of its consolations. The captains of men of war in the neighborhood of the floating churches just spoken of, are obliged to see that the Catholic seamen attend Mass, and are not now, as formerly, compelled to assist at the Church of England prayers. The field of labor of Catholic army chaplains gradually extends; besides being attached to many home stations, such as Aldershot, Chatham, Portsea, Woolwich, etc., they are found in foreign stations also, such as Bermuda, Halifax, Mauritius, New-Zealand, St. Helena, and Malta. The Catholic chaplains, it may be added, live on the best terms with the officers and with the Protestant clergymen in the same barracks. "We never interfere with each other," said one of the former a few days since to the writer; "indeed, for my part, I would not think of trying to convert the Protestants; I would rather spend all my time in striving to convert the Catholics. I am sure that, out of every hundred of our own men, there are eighty that need to be converted."

The prisons and union work-houses also, which used to be the scenes of so much injustice toward Catholic prisoners, paupers, and children, [Footnote 115] have now assumed a more liberal and Christian aspect.

[Footnote 115: The Workhouse Question. Lamp, Aug. 19, 1865.]

Chaplains are appointed to the larger houses of correction to minister to Catholic inmates, and Catholic children in the workhouses enjoy the benefits of instruction in the religion of their parents. There is in the Catholic Directory, which appears annually, a list of the charitable institutions in each diocese, and nothing can be more cheering and hopeful than the view it presents. Thus, in the Directory for 1866, we find in the Diocese of Westminster alone 3 Almhouses; 1 Asylum for Aged Poor; 1 Home for Aged Females; 1 Hospital served by Sisters of Mercy; 1 House of Mercy for Servants out of Place; 1 Night Refuge; 1 St. Vincent of Paul's Shoe-Black Brigade; 2 Refuges for Penitents; 1 Reformatory School for Boys; 7 Industrial Schools for Boys, and 11 for Girls. The impression made on society by these admirable institutions is very great. They receive much countenance and support from non-Catholics; they instruct and console the ignorant and afflicted members of our own body; they call forth an abundance of self-denying labor and charity on the part of our own people, and tend more powerfully than any arguments to propagate the ancient faith. They prove that our religion emanates from a God of love, that we are not mere political schemers nor superstitious devotees, but sober-minded, practical Christians, battling with sin, and relieving misery in every shape. The English public is peculiarly alive to the services of Sisters devoted to works of Charity. You cannot walk through the streets now, or travel by railway, without meeting them, and everywhere they are respected. Their costume provokes no ridicule, their youth and good looks (if such they have) are secure from insult. Their crucifix and beads are badges of which all know the import, and involuntary blessings attend their steps. They are, in their way, the apostles of England. Their devotion to the sick and wounded in the Crimea won for them the favor even of their foes. Few will refuse them alms when they ask it for the poor. They are types of self-sacrifice, daughters of consolation, angel visitants. They impersonate the Gospel. Many of them come from abroad, from France, Italy, and Belgium, impelled by an invincible desire for the conversion of England. Their looks bespeak their mission no less than their garb. They are calm, collected, gentle. Children yearn toward them with instinctive fondness, and vice itself is shamed by their silent purity. The names of their several orders tell plainly on what their hearts are fixed. They belong to the "Good Shepherd;" they are the "Faithful Companions of Jesus;" they are handmaids of the "Holy Child Jesus," of "Notre Dame de Sion," of "Jesus in the Temple," of "Marie Reparatrice." They are "Sisters of Mercy," of "Providence," of "the Poor," of "Nazareth," of "Penance," of the "Holy Family," of "St. Joseph," of "St. Paul," of "the Cross." They address themselves to the heart rather than to the understanding, but they are not on that account less powerful instruments in the work of social improvement. They have broken down many of the barriers which prejudice had raised against the Catholic religion, and helped more than any logical triumph to subdue the hostility and soften the language of the press.

That mighty engine is, on the whole, an auxiliary to the Catholic cause in England. If it promulgates many falsehoods respecting us, it is almost always ready to publish their confutation also. It reproduces our primate's pastorals and all other documents of public interest that emanate from our bishops. It helps us, in the main, in the battle we are fighting for the attainment of equal political privileges, and employs the pens of many Catholic writers. No respectable periodical taboos a contributor because he is a Catholic, nor excludes him from its staff if his writing be up to the required mark, and his conduct in reference to controversial matters be discreet. Many non-Catholic journals are edited or sub-edited by Catholics, and this accounts in part for the altered tone of the press toward us of late.

Our own literature has recently been marked by fewer controversial books and pamphlets than it was some twenty years ago. Then, every convert of distinction, when admitted into the church, thought it incumbent on him to publish those reasons which had influenced him most powerfully in so momentous a change. The library tables in Catholic families were covered by the writings of Wiseman, Newman, Faber, Renouf, Lewis, Dodsworth, Northcote, Allies, Ward, and Thompson. Each presented his plea for Catholicism from a different point of view, and each added something to the aggregate of arguments derived from Scripture and antiquity. The controversy is now taking another turn. The church's historical ground is less violently contested, and she is drawing from her inexhaustible armory weapons to meet subtler foes. She faces the sceptic; she probes liberalism with Ithnriel's spear; she establishes from the very nature of things the necessity of an infallible standard of faith and morals. She draws up her line of arguments with a more compact front and extended wings. She appears at the same time more unbending and more liberal. She recognizes more freely and joyfully than ever the workings of the Holy Spirit in communions external to her pale, while she insists with extraordinary earnestness on her exclusive possession of the entire and incorrupt deposit of the faith. Such was the purport of a remarkable letter addressed to the Rev. Dr. Pusey by Dr. Manning, now Archbishop of Westminster, in 1864. Never were orthodoxy and liberality more happily united than in this pamphlet. Never did a Catholic prelate and divine make larger admissions without sacrificing a particle of Catholic theology. It is marked by the charity of an apostle and the accuracy of a logician. The same remarks apply to the archbishop's work on England ana Christendom. "We will venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than he—we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal emphasis—on the piety and salvability of persons external to the visible church." [Footnote 116]

[Footnote 116: Dublin Review, July, 1867, p. 110]

The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do these flourish more than in that of Westminster. The Archbishop personally promotes social intercourse by throwing open his drawing-rooms every Tuesday evening, during the London season, to such gentlemen as may think proper to attend his receptions. There, may be met, from time to time, prelates from distant countries, ambassadors, members of parliament, noblemen, heads of colleges, artists, men of science, converts, and old Catholics, with now and then a non-Catholic guest, whom curiosity, respect for the primate, or yearning toward a calumniated church, draws into company to which he is little used. The Stafford Club is another centre of union, comprising about 300 members, and including among them a large part of the titled and moneyed Catholics of England, Wales, and Scotland. The archbishops and bishops of England and Ireland are ex-officio honorary members, and they frequently avail themselves of the privilege. A middle class club has lately been opened in the city under the primate's patronage, and at this lectures are delivered, to which, as well as to all other advantages, non-Catholic members are admissible. The only condition required of such members is, that they shall observe the rules of courtesy, and abstain (together with Catholic members) from unbecoming controversy on religious and political questions. Lecturing is not so popular a form of instruction in England as in the United States, yet it is much more generally in vogue than it was, and it is destined, we believe, to exert a wide influence hereafter in propagating anew the Catholic faith through the British empire.

What we need and hope for is the reaction of Catholic Ireland on Catholic England. Centuries of cruel misgovernment have retarded the civilization of that unhappy country, and the loss which it sustains is not its only, but also ours. In knowledge, education, manners, commerce, industry, liberty, in all that constitutes national maturity, it is behind England. Reading, lecturing, mental activity, in Ireland are all in the back ground; and consequently the church, which there keeps alive the faith in the heart of a peasant and small farmer population, does not act indirectly on English Catholic society with that force which would belong to it under more favorable circumstances. "The centuries which have ripened England and Scotland with flower and fruit, have swept over Ireland in withering and desolation;" [Footnote 117] she has therefore little to give us, much to receive from us. If England had been bountiful to her, she would, in return, have been bountiful to England. If we had shared with Ireland our material prosperity, she would now be imparting to us more spiritual blessings, communication between the two churches would be more brisk, and their relations would be marked by more complete unity of feeling and purpose.

[Footnote 117: Archbishop Manning's Letter to Earl Grey. p. 17.]

The time is probably drawing near when this healthy and reciprocal action of the Irish and English Catholic Church will be fully restored. If England is to retain Ireland at all as a part of the empire, it must be by establishing equal laws, repealing all penal enactments against Catholics and their religion, resolving the national system of education into denominational schools, disestablishing and disendowing the Protestant Church, and placing on Irish landlords such restrictions in the tenure of land as will secure the tenant from misery and hopeless serfdom. She must stanch the bleeding wounds of emigration, and wipe away the tears of ages. Then, and then only, can we hope to see Ireland a prosperous nation, her people thrifty and happy, her civilization raised to a level with other Christian countries of Europe, and her church putting forth all its native might to console and instruct its own congregations, and to aid in the work of recovering England to the faith of the Apostles. Political and social degradation, such as that which afflicts Ireland, is incompatible with a free and flourishing church, with a high moral tone, religious zeal, and exemplary lives on the part of its victims. Cottiers, and "tenants at will" of absentee landlords, having no security that their outlay is their own, and that they will ever reap the advantage of it; barely earning their potatoes and buttermilk by the sweat of their brow, and looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the comparative wealth and luxury enjoyed by five millions of their fellow-countrymen in America; liable at any moment to be evicted for political motives, or that their rent may be raised; galled and maddened by the remembrance of 50,000 evictions in one year; [Footnote 118] such persons, we say, deprived of the protection of the law, must be more than human if they do not in many instances prove themselves lawless. But the day of redress is at hand, we trust. May the day of retribution be averted!

[Footnote 118: 1849. Butt's Land Tenure in Ireland, p. 34.]

It is, perhaps, matter for regret that English Catholics have now no political leader. Since the voice of Daniel O'Connell was hushed by death, no representative of their interests in parliament has appeared gifted with genius and eloquence of a commanding order. Mr. Pope Hennessy has been excluded from the House of Commons by his Irish constituents in consequence of his conservative principles, which are not popular among them, and has accepted the governorship of Labuan. His talents are thus almost lost to the Catholic cause; and though there are more than thirty Catholic members in the Commons, their influence is not what it should be. It is neutralized by the many Irish Protestant members who represent landed interests; and valuable as are the services of Mr. Maguire, Mr. Monsell, Mr. Blake, and Major O'Reilly, it is to Protestant rather than to Catholic champions that we look now for advocacy of Irish tenant claims, and the redress of Irish wrongs. In the House of Lords we are most feebly represented. Out of twenty-six Catholic peers, seventeen only have seats, and none of these are distinguished as debaters. [Footnote 119]

[Footnote 119: See Lord Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 16.]

In the time of Charles II. the Catholic peerage was more numerous than it is now in proportion to the commoners. Long after that period, also, the lords and gentry held a higher position than was in harmony with the scanty number of their poorer co-religionists. Indeed, we have not yet recovered the blow which was inflicted on us by the expulsion of the peers [Footnote 120] under the rule of a sovereign who was even then a Catholic by conviction, and avowed himself such on the bed of death. But though the heads of old Catholic families in England do not, as a rule, shine as public characters, they have a title to respect which none others can claim. They represent those who suffered a long period of banishment for conscience' sake, treasuring in their hearts a faith more precious than courtly splendor. For this they were outcasts and pariahs, bowed beneath invidious disabilities and penal laws, deprived of all the material advantages which spring from good education, brilliant careers, and fine prospects. Despair of this world had become a part of their inheritance, and it is no wonder that their successors to this day are somewhat rustic and unskilled in the ways of cabinets and courts.

[Footnote 120: Flanagan's English and Irish History, p. 665.]

The Catholic revival, in short, in England—a revival of whose reality and strength we daily see the proofs—is not to be ascribed to external causes. No zealous autocrat, no lordly oligarchy, no foreign invasion, no laws, no concordats, have brought it about. Everything was against it, and everything seems now to favor it. Penal statutes, as decided and almost as deadly as those of the Caesars, forbade it; the Revolution of 1688 excluded from the throne any sovereign professing it; George III. fought against it as stoutly and more successfully than he did against the American Colonies; Pitt succumbed in his efforts to obtain for it some measure of justice; Fox abandoned its cause politically as hopeless; [Footnote 121] and the Grenville cabinet, with all the talents, was dismissed, because it planned a trifling concession to Catholic officers in the army and navy.

[Footnote 121: Pellew. Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. 435. Jesse's George III. iii. 476.]

George IV., like his father, frowned on Catholic emancipation, and yielded to it only under the pressure of a threatened rebellion. But though political privileges were granted to Catholics, it was deemed impossible that their dark, decrepit superstition should ever regain its footing in England. The book of common prayer witnessed against it; the preface to the Protestant Scriptures called its head antichrist; a thousand and ten thousand pulpits thundered against it Sunday after Sunday; dissenters scorned and trampled on it as the worn-out garments of the Babylonish harlot; millions of tracts and volumes pointed out its supposed errors, and cart-loads and ship-loads of Bibles were dispersed through the land as antidotes to its poison. Yet it spread. It triumphed over obloquy. It appealed in its defence to that very Bible which was believed to condemn it. It courted inquiry. It asserted its own divinity. It baffled the law, bent the will of kings and parliaments, scattered the arguments of its enemies like chaff, and advanced steadily as the tide, sapping every dam, and levelling every breakwater that opposed its flow. In the bosom of the adverse church it found advocates, and in almost every family it made converts. New concessions are made to it in every session of parliament; higher and higher offices in the state and in the magistracy are entrusted to its members; the paltry restrictions which yet remain in force will soon be swept away, and having once obtained social and political equality, we have not the remotest doubt that it will obtain, also, superiority approaching as near to supremacy as will be consistent with the liberty of every other portion of society.

There is an increasing disposition among sectarians in England to make common cause with Catholics on a variety of grounds. One of these grounds has already been mentioned. They would willingly see national education everywhere made purely denominational, and many of those among them who are strongly attached to their own particular form of belief would concur with the Catholic primate in asking that the schools endowed by the state may, in each place, be given over to the majority, whether Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Dissenting, and that schools required by the minority may be supported on the voluntary system. [Footnote 122] There is, however, a difficulty in this proposal which would give rise to endless jangling. In some places there is no majority, religious persuasions are equally divided. In others the majority is small and fluctuating. What is the majority this month may be the minority in the next. How could their rival claims to endowment be adjusted in such cases?

[Footnote 122: Letter to Earl Grey, p. 20.]

But again, there is a growing disposition among religious men of all denominations to make common cause with the Catholic Church in her warfare against infidelity and social crime, particularly drunkenness. Their ministers now are constantly coming in contact with our priests, sitting with them on committees, and speaking side by side with them on platforms on subjects affecting the general weal. They are beginning to recognize the great fact that our war with infidelity is not of yesterday, that we have from age to age maintained the fundamental truths of revelation in the face of a world of scoffers, and that if the banner of the cross could fall from our hands, it would lie in the dust. Ritualists imitate our solemn rites; sedate churchmen have a friendly feeling toward us because we hold the apostolic succession; Biblical scholars in all sects defer to us as the mediaeval guardians and copyists of the Bible; Low-Churchmen endorse our doctrines of grace; Dissenters hold out to us "the right hand of fellowship," because we also are non-conformists as regards the Established Church; and even Quakers [Footnote 123] see in us some hopeful features when they hear us declare that we are affiliated in spirit to all who desire to know and obey the truth, and who err only through invincible ignorance.

[Footnote 123: See speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, March 13th, 1868.]

As time goes on, they will give us more credit for spiritual acumen. They will see how justly we have estimated the claims of each successive pretender to religious inspiration and knowledge of divine mysteries. They will ratify our decision on the isms of this as of former centuries. They will admit, for example, that we have divined the true nature of animal magnetism, with all those extraordinary phenomena which perplex so many minds in England and elsewhere. To some persons these manifestations appear wholly impostures, to others they seem real and useful, and to others again, indifferent, absurd, and unworthy of attention. The church, on the contrary, after sifting the evidence adduced concerning them, pronounces them real in many instances, useless, unlawful, and Satanic. Theologians like Perrone and Ballerini have devoted long attention to them, and laid bare their wickedness in its most deadly aspects. Under a mask of mingled absurdity and terror, they reveal just so much of the invisible world as may deceive and ruin souls. They are horrible mimicries of the angelic and spiritual economy of the church. In all these phases of mesmerism, somnambulism, clairvoyance, table-turning, table-rapping, and evocation of spirits, they testify to the truth of divine revelation in respect to the spiritual world. So far they are of some advantage, for the evil one is always rendering involuntary homage to the Gospel which he seeks to pervert. But in exchange for this, they draw deluded multitudes away from the true and lawful way of holding communion with the dead, piercing the mysteries of the world unseen, obtaining divine guidance, mental illumination, cure of bodily infirmities, signal answers to prayer, visions, ecstasies, and knowledge of future events. From none of these things are the faithful debarred in the church, but in spiritism, or demon-worship, they are attracted to them in ways which are generally fatal to their morals and their faith. We have heard from an intimate ally of Mr. Home, now a convert to the Catholic Church, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred those who put themselves in communication with spirits by means of table-speaking, lose their belief in the Christian religion and adopt a loose mode of life. The political grievances of which English and Irish Catholics have still to complain, are of old not of recent origin. They belong to a system now virtually exploded, and if our statute-book were a tabula rasa they could not be written in it again. There is full proof of this in the fact that Great Britain legislates for her colonies more justly than for Ireland, or even for England. In Sydney and Melbourne, in Australia, there are Catholic colleges endowed by the government, and in Canada there is an endowed Catholic University. Yet Ireland, with 4,500,000 Catholics, has hitherto asked in vain for the like favors. The colonies, moreover, are not burdened with a Protestant establishment, but lie open to the exertions of Catholic and Protestant missionaries alike, who receive from the state equal encouragement and occasional subsidies. The consequence is, that in almost every colonial dependency of Great Britain the true church is in full activity, and gives ample proof of her divine mission. The following table of our episcopate will show how wide is the field of action afforded to it by the tolerant system which England has pursued of late years. If she had not at the Reformation fallen from the faith, there would not perhaps at this moment be an idol temple in the world. If she should ever return as a nation to the fold of Christ, her mighty influence may, with the help of other Christian people, suffice to break in pieces every fetish and exorcise the races possessed by demons. The figures here given are of the year 1867; and it may be observed that in all the twenty vicariates of India, Burma, and Siam there was an increase of the Catholic population over the preceding year, with the exception only of those which are under the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. In his province there was a small decrease. [Footnote 124]

[Footnote 124: Catholic Directory 1868, p. 19 to 26.]

Archbishops

Bishops

Vicars
Apostolic

England | 1 | 12 | ...
Ireland | 4 | 24 | ...
Scotland | ... | ... | 3

Malta
Gozo
Gibraltar

...

2

1

Quebec
Halifax
Oregon
British Columbia
Harbor Grace
St. John's, Newfoundland

2

17

2

West-Indies | 1 | 1 | 2
Africa | ... | 1 | 4
India, Burma, | ... | ... | 20
Australia | 1 | 10 | ...0
New Zealand | ... | 2 | ...
Total | 9 | 69 | 32

From this it appears that there are now no Catholics in the British empire invested with the episcopal office. The number is little short of that of the Anglican Bishops, with all the power and influence of the state, and a vast Protestant population to give effect to their exertions. Yet, poor and comparatively unaided as our bishops are, the results of their labors in the colonies and among the heathen far exceed anything which rival missionaries can boast. As to the Russian clergy, their torpor in regard to idolatrous nations has often been commented on, and they are strictly forbidden by imperial edicts to endeavor to make converts among them. [Footnote 125] It is therefore with Protestant missionaries only that we have to vie, and these, through their disunion, lose, in great measure, the fruits of their zeal. The two millions sterling per annum, which their societies in the British isles alone expend, [Footnote 126] do not enable them to make head against the rapid extension of the Catholic faith. In China, India, Ceylon, the Antipodes, Oceanica, Africa, the Levant, Syria, Armenia, and America, they have signally failed in converting the heathen, and in rivalling the happy results of Catholic missions. [Footnote 127]

[Footnote 125: Wagner's Travels in Persia, vol. il. 204.]

[Footnote 126: The Times, April 19, 1860]

[Footnote 127: Marshall's Christian. Missions, vol. i. 9-15.]

Every Catholic nation is a vast missionary society, and if England had been such to this day, her Indian possessions would be basking in the full light of the gospel. But, alas! how awfully has she betrayed her trust. The speeches of Burke, the lives of Clive and Hastings, bear witness against her. Rapine and cruelty marked the earlier stages of her Indian government. During long years she left the Indians to their idols, and then recruited her treasury by a tax laid upon them, and commanded her troops to pay homage to the demons of the land. Her efforts for their conversion, if they can be called hers, are feeble and unsystematic, while Catholic missions in every part of British India are steadily conducted on a uniform plan. Eleven years ago there were about a million Catholics in the wide territory, and the spirit which guided S. François Xavier, Robert de' Nobili, John de Bretto, and Laynez, prospered the work of their hands. Since that time the Madras Catholic Directories show that constant progress has been made. In some dioceses from 500 to 1000 souls are reclaimed annually from Hindooism, Mohammedanism, and Armenian sects. The lives of the converts are often most edifying, and though much ignorance and superstition has to be weeded out of them, they show forth on the whole the glory of Him who has called them out of darkness into marvellous light. Registries of adult baptisms being kept at each of the stations, it is easy to ascertain the progress made. In 1859, 2614 adults in the province of Madura were received into the church, and the native college of Negapatam, frequented by young men of high caste only, had produced seven priests, eight theological students, a large number of catechists and school-masters, with several government officers. The Jesuit fathers had founded five orphanages and three hospitals, beside convents of Carmelite and Franciscan nuns, where Hindoo women, under the constraining influence of divine grace, led devout and austere lives. [Footnote 128] It has hitherto been the policy of our rulers to avoid interfering with the religion of the natives, [Footnote 129] but the time, we may hope, is at hand when more righteous and merciful principles will prevail in the councils of state.

By promoting schism, England delays the conversion of the heathen. Friends and foes alike testify to the inefficacy of English Protestant missions. They can destroy faith, but never inspire it; and those who desire to read the true records of the triumph of the cross in heathen lands, and especially in the dominions of Great Britain, must seek them, not in the publications of London Missionary Societies, but in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, and the writings of Mr. Marshall and Father Strickland. [Footnote 130]

[Footnote 128: Mission de Madurt, par L. Saint Cyr, S.J. (1859.)]

[Footnote 129: Marshall's Christian Missions, vol. i. 412-419.]

[Footnote 130: Catholic Missions in Southern India to 1865.]

The present Earl Grey, though an Anglican, once said to a gentleman from whom we heard it, that he wished, for his part, that Catholic bishops only were supported in the colonies by the English government; for that they alone, in his opinion, were actuated by pure motives and self-sacrificing zeal. Earl Grey does not stand alone in his truly liberal sentiments. Indeed, it is wonderful how generous and enlightened many of our statesmen have become suddenly, since the Fenians have threatened their English homes. Impossible as it is for us to defend their conspiracy, it seems to bear out the assertion that no people ever obtained their rights by mere remonstrance and petition. The injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment in Catholic Ireland now flashes upon our rulers like light from heaven, though they have been told of it before a thousand times. Now they are as eager for its destruction as they were for its support. Now they see the matter as all Europe, all the civilized world except themselves, saw ft long ago. Now they quote with approval the question proposed by Sir Robert Peel: "This missionary church of yours, with all that wealth and power could do for her, can she in two hundred years show a balance of two hundred converts?" Now they endorse the opinion of Goldwin Smith, that "No Roman Catholic mission has ever done so much for Roman Catholicism in any nation as the Protestant establishment has done for it in Ireland." [Footnote 131] It has, to use Mr. Bright's words, "made Roman Catholicism in Ireland not only a faith, but absolutely a patriotism." It has made the Irish "more intensely Roman than the members of their church are found to be in almost any other kingdom in Europe." [Footnote 132] "Don't talk to me of its being a church!" exclaimed Burke. "It is a wholesale robbery." "It is an anomaly of so gross a kind," said Lord Brougham, just thirty years ago, "that it outrages every principle of common sense. ... It cannot be upheld unless the tide of knowledge should turn back." "Irish Toryism," wrote John Sterling, in 1842, "is the downright proclamation of brutal injustice, and that in the name of God and the Bible!" All this English statesmen, who long obstinately resisted truth and justice, now see and acknowledge from a conviction too prompt to have been inspired by anything but fear. Terror has been known to turn the hair gray in a night, and to fill the mind with wisdom in a day. In saying this, however, we do not mean to express any approval of Fenianism, knowing it, as we do, to be a detestable conspiracy, secret, unlawful, and condemned by the church.

[Footnote 131: Letter in Morning Star, March 30, 1868.]

[Footnote 132: Speech in the House of Commons, March 31.]

The disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church will directly affect the condition of the Catholics in England. It will place their Irish brethren on a social level with Protestants, and thus add to the respectability of the entire body of Catholics in the three kingdoms. It will diminish the number and influence of those Irish Protestant clergymen who cross the channel year by year to declaim on the platforms of our halls and assemblies against the supposed corruption of the Church of Rome. It will remove ten thousand heart-burnings from the people of Ireland, and enable them, though differing in religion in some districts, to live together in peace and harmony. It will increase self-respect in both sections of the community—in the Protestant, because they will no longer be grasping oppressors; in the Catholic, because they will no longer be fleeced and oppressed. The relative merits of their creeds will then have to be discussed on even ground, and no weapons but those of the sanctuary will avail in the fight. The voluntary system by which their ministers will be supported will throw them entirely upon their moral resources, and every adscititious aid in propagating their belief will be happily rescinded. The settlement of the Irish Church question will soon be followed by legal improvement in the condition of tenants as regards their landlords; and thus the two crying evils of our Irish administration being redressed, speculation will be encouraged, commerce will thrive, fortunes will be made, emigration will be arrested, and emigrants recalled. The church of Catholics will share in the general prosperity, and chapels now little better than mud hovels will be razed to the ground to make room for buildings stately and fair as the collegiate churches of Windsor, Middleham, and Brecon, in the olden time, or as the Priory of Stone, the Orphanage of Norwood, and the College of St. Cuthbert, near Durham, at the present day.

There is at this moment a concurrence of events favorable to the Catholic religion in the British empire, such as never was seen before since the Reformation. No fires of Smithfield, no renegade queen like Elizabeth, no Spanish Armada, no Gunpowder Plot, no Puritan ascendency, no despotic house of Stuart, no Pretender, no Titus Oates, no French or other foreign invasion, no Lord George Gordon, no rebellion like that of Robert Emmett and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, is looming in the distance, marring the prospect, and nearing us to turn hope into despair. Even Fenian outbreaks are, we believe, anticipated and virtually undone. Every sun that shines is ripening the harvest, and were it not that the enemy is more busy than ever in sowing tares, we might expect that within a century the whole, or at least the larger part, of the population of the three kingdoms would be included in the domain of the church.

What we have most to dread is the spread of unbelief in its subtlest and most engaging form. It comes among us with stealthy tread, and with the smile of hypocrisy on its face. It professes respect for the Christian religion, but with homage on its lips carries contempt in its heart. It regards all religions as superstitious, and the Christian as the best among bad ones. It pervades every branch of our non-Catholic literature, and offers fruit slightly poisoned to every lip. It combats dogma and the supernatural in every shape, appeals in all things to the senses, sets up humanity as its idol, and studiously confounds the distinction between right and wrong. It maintains the authority of Scripture, provided all that is supernatural and miraculous be eliminated. It reveres Jesus Christ when placed by the side of "the mild and honest Aurelius, Cakya Mouni, [Footnote 133] and the sweet and humble Spinoza." [Footnote 134] It cites as examples of men "most filled with the spirit of God," Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Vincent of Paul, and Voltaire. [Footnote 135] It inscribes the name of Christ on volutes in tapestried drawing-rooms, [Footnote 136] together with those of Socrates, Columbus, Luther, and Washington. It affirms that "we can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion," [Footnote 137] and that "no one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that, as a thinker, it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead." [Footnote 137 (sic)] It approves of "hearty good-will evinced toward all persistence of endeavor, whether the object of that persistence be good or evil according to moral or religious standards," and it is drawn strongly into sympathy with such poets as Robert Browning in their "keen love for humanity as such, a love which is displayed toward weakness and evil as much as toward strength and goodness, provided only the attribute be human." [Footnote 138] Such sympathy with all that is human it accounts "divine." It worships, in short, the creature more than the Creator; it feels no need of grace, and still less of atonement. It relapses, consciously or unconsciously, into the frozen zone where Comte reigns supreme master of a system of icy negatives called philosophy—negatives the more specious because veiled under the term positivism—where all but facts attested by the senses must be renounced, and all final causes, all supernatural intervention, scattered to the wind. [Footnote 139]

[Footnote 133: The fourth Buddha.]

[Footnote 134: Renan. Vie de Jesus]

[Footnote 135: Autobiography of Garibaldi. Edited by Alexandre Dumas.]

[Footnote 136: In Victor Hugo's House in Guernsey. See his William Shakespeare, p. 568.]

[Footnote 137: John Stuart Mill on Liberty, p. 19.]

[Footnote 138: John T. Nettleship's Essays on Robert Browning. Preface.]

[Footnote 139: Cours de Philosophie Positive, 1839. Politique Positiviste, 1851-4.]

Toward this the Protestant mind in England is daily tending with increasing proneness, that portion only excepted which looks upward toward Catholic ritual and dogma. Its presence is more and more apparent among educated men, in Parliament, the universities, the learned professions, the reviews and journals of the day. It is an enemy that meets us in every walk, and is more difficult to grapple with than any definite form of error. It objects not merely to this or that part of our Creed, as Lutheran s and Calvinists did on their first appearing, but it meets us in limine with doubts which pagans would have been ashamed to profess. Even writers on the whole Christian, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, have aided in forming it; but Neology, Strauss, Comte, Mill, Carlyle, Sterling, Hugo, have brought it in like a flood. Mazzini propounds it openly in Macmillan's Magazine, while the Saturday Review and the Pall Mall Gazette adapt it weekly and daily to the palate of the million. Not that the free-thinkers are agreed together; they often jeer at each other. "Singular what gospels men will believe," cries Carlyle, [Footnote 140] "even gospels according to Jean Jacques." But this is the language of each, "Adieu, O church; thy road is that way, mine is this. ... What we are going to is abundantly obscure; but what all men are going from is very plain." [Footnote 141]

[Footnote 140: Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, ii. 70.]

[Footnote 141: Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 286.]

These, then, are the two great antagonists, the Catholic Church and Infidelity in its last and most popular shape of Positivism. People in England are choosing their sides, and drawing nearer and nearer to one or the other of these champions. Minor differences are merging into the broad features which distinguish the two. To the positivism of Comte there stands opposed the positivism of the Church. She alone speaks positively, authoritatively, uniformly, and permanently, respecting the invisible world, the First Cause, the revelation of God in Christ, in the Gospel, the Scriptures, and the Church. She bears witness at the same time of God and of herself, and even those who cannot accept her testimony admit that of all the enemies of infidelity her presence is the most imposing, and her language the most unwavering and distinct. None can accuse her of hostility to science, for the Holy See in this, as in all past ages, has repeatedly declared with what favor it looks on really scientific labors. "It is impudently bruited abroad," wrote Pius IX. to M. Mahon de Monaghan, [Footnote 142] "that the Catholic religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which may thence be expected." "Rome," says the Dublin Review, [Footnote 143] "does not aim directly at material well-being; she does not teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds no system of induction; she invents neither printing-press, steam-engines, nor telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute, curbs his passions, improves his understanding, instils into him principles of duty and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his ambition and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the progress of humanity, that, under her influence, he acquires insensibly an aptitude for the successful pursuit even of physical science, such as no other teacher could impart.

[Footnote 142: See Rome et la Civilisation. Paris, 1863.]

[Footnote 143: April, 1866, pp. 299, 301.]

.... It is manifest to all whose thoughts reach below the surface of things, that the services which Lord Bacon rendered to philosophy, and Newton to science, were indirectly due to the Catholic Church."

If the Catholic Church is ever to be rebuilt among us in anything like its ancient power and splendor, it must be raised on a broad basis. We do not mean that its real foundations admit of change or extension. They are the same from age to age. But they must, to meet the wants of the age, be made to appear as comprehensive as they really are. Happily, tolerant maxims now prevail in religion, and liberal views in politics. The divine right of hereditary kings is exploded, and persecution is no longer held up as a sacred duty. The Catholic Church, rightly understood, is the most liberal of all institutions. It is the source and security of true freedom, and it is only when perverted that it can serve the cause of despotism. It has everything to gain from liberty, and everything to lose by adopting tyrannical principles. Its best friends in England are those who labor to develop and exhibit its alliance with all that is true in science and good in mankind, and who rely more upon its heavenly powers of persuasion than on any excommunications and anathemas, who conciliate to the utmost without compromise, and relax rules without ever breaking or warping them. Anti-catholic writers have labored hard to prove that our religion is the enemy of progress, and it is therefore our duty and interest to show by word and deed how utterly false their assertions on this subject are. It will be a greater triumph for the church to have demonstrated her superior philosophy after fair discussion, than it would have been to suppress that discussion or to shirk it. We have really nothing to fear. Catholicism lies at the root of all sciences, and it alone makes progress possible.

Such are the views of the wisest and best of those English Catholics who work in the literary hive. They heartily adopt the words of M. Cochin, in his speech at Malines. "Christianity is the father of all progress, of all discoveries." "Every science is one of God's arguments, and every progress one of God's instruments." Modern science is but an offshoot of the Gospel, a result of the Incarnation. It redeems our bodies from a thousand disabilities and discomforts, as the Cross has redeemed our souls. The discovery of America, the art of printing, the telescope, the microscope, the clock, the mariner's needle, the steam-engine, superseding the slaves who were once the machinery of the world, gas, telegraphic wires, what are they but minor gospels and temporary redemptions for the toiling and weary sons of men? The Church views such improvements with delight, and sees in them the means, when rightly employed, of restoring the broken alliance between earthly and heavenly blessings. Is this what you call material progress? No, no; it is all moral improvement. You might as well call the press a material improvement as the railroad and the telegraph. As the one brings thought into immortal life, so the others redeem man from the sorrows of intervening distance. The Church affiliates them gladly to herself, and traces a moral advance in every material gain, a development of redemption by Christ in the progress of agriculture, improved machinery, in chloroform, in short-hand, lithography, photography, the respirator, and ever implement and utensil which makes labor less irksome and pain less poignant.

In the science of political economy especially, English Catholics are anxious to rectify prevalent mistakes, and place that delightful study on its proper basis. The writings of Ricardo and Adam Smith, of McCulloch, Senior, and Mill, have familiarized persons' minds with the subject, but they have failed to show how every principle and statement of sound political economy rests on some maxim of the Gospel or of the church.

The Utilitarian doctrines of Jeremy Bentham were as bald and selfish as those of Malthus on Population were immoral and absurd. Self-restraint and self renunciation are the soul of thrift, the source of wealth, the element of labor, the main-spring of exertion, the corner-stone of the social edifice, the health of the community, the rectifying principle which keeps the whole machinery of society in active and harmonious operation. It would make the rich poor in spirit, and the poor comparatively rich. It would place a happy limit to the extremes of wealth and indigence. It is, or should be, the fundamental principle of the production and distribution of wealth. If duly carried out, it would promote solidarity in all its branches to a wonderful extent, and secure liberty as the condition requisite for the very existence of property and the only possible sphere of mutual exertion. M. Perin [Footnote 144] has shown with admirable force and precision how Catholicism establishes self-renunciation as "the corner-stone of all social relations," and guarantees "the greatest freedom to man, and the greatest security to property." The Dublin Review [Footnote 145] also has done good service in popularizing M. Perin's arguments and supplying an antidote to the defective teaching of John Stuart Mill, and other non-Catholic political economists.

[Footnote 144: De la Richesse dans les Sociétés Chrétiennes.]

[Footnote 145: April, 1866. Christian Political Economy.]

The Academia of the Catholic Religion, founded by Cardinal Wiseman in 1861, continues to be productive of happy results. Its main design was to exhibit, in the lectures delivered at its meetings and published afterward, the alliance between sacred and secular science. It is affiliated to the Academia in Rome, and two volumes of essays read before it have already appeared in print. [Footnote 146] The rich and varied learning of Cardinal Wiseman, the clear, incisive style of Dr. Manning, the minute mediaeval lore of Dr. Rock, the calm and affectionate tone of Mr. Oakeley, the acumen and exhaustive faculties of Dr. Ward, render these publications very attractive to Catholics who are fond of argumentative writing. They keep up active thought and speculation in a highly influential circle, and are valuable landmarks in the history of the Catholic revival in England. The meetings of the Academia are held at the Archbishop's residence in York Place, London.

[Footnote 146: First Series, 1865. Second Series, 1868. Longmans.]

It is a remarkable fact that at this moment [Footnote 147] there are two political parties in the state, each of which is bent on advancing Catholic interests, though in different ways.

[Footnote 147: April, 1868.]

Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, the heads respectively of the Conservative and Liberal parties, are seeking to redress one of the great evils of Ireland, the former by levelling up and the latter by levelling down. The government would, if it were able, raise the Catholic church in Ireland to a footing with the Establishment by endowing a Catholic University and the Catholic priesthood, while the opposition proposes simply the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Protestant church. In both cases the result would be religious equality in Ireland, though there can be no doubt that the plan suggested by the Liberals is the more rational and feasible one. It is the one, moreover, which is sanctioned by the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin and by the Archbishop of Westminster. On Sunday, the 12th of April, the faithful in London signed a petition in favor of Mr. Gladstone's resolutions by the Archbishop's express recommendation. It is pleasant to see the Catholic Primate and the future Prime Minister of England thus cooperating in the interests of the Catholic religion, especially when we remember that they are old friends and were at college together.

The Easter of 1868 has been marked by great increase of spiritual activity in the churches of large towns. Numbers of Catholics who had neglected the sacraments have been restored to the use of them, and Protestants come Sunday after Sunday to hear the sermons delivered in our churches. [Footnote 148]

[Footnote 148: Weekly Register, April 11, 1868.]

The public mind is stirred on the subject of our religion, and curiosity in very numerous instances ends in conversion. A recent clerical convert has placed £5000 in the hands of a prelate for the good of his diocese, and a whole community of Anglican Sisters of Mercy have yielded to the direction of clergymen who are priests indeed. The Ritualist parsons are busy fraying the way for Roman missionaries. Their altars are draped in colors according to the season, acolytes bend before them and serve, water is mingled with their sacramental wine, lights are burning at their communions, the host is elevated, their robes are gorgeously embroidered, and dense clouds of incense mount before their shrines, as if they were dedicated to the God of unity under the patronage of Catholic saints. Many of their flock are deluded by this empty pomp, but many also are led by it to the true springs of faith and the observance of a better ceremonial. During the first half of the present century 260 religious houses and colleges have been raised in England to repair the loss of 681 monasteries of men and women uprooted at the time of the Reformation. If we continue and end the century with equal exertions—and it is probable we shall exceed rather than fall short of them—we shall by that time have nearly as many religious institutions as our forefathers could boast after the sway of the church in England had lasted 800 years under royal protection.

Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's
Life of St. Paula.
In Three Chapters.

Chapter II.

God had given great compensation to Paula in the rare natures of her children. The eldest, and perhaps the most gifted, Blesilla, combined with delicate health an ardent soul, quick wit, and a charming mind. Her penetration astonished even St. Jerome. She was full of those characteristics that make one hope everything and fear everything. She was but fifteen when she lost her father, and seventeen when St. Jerome first knew her, in the first bloom of her youth and beauty. She spoke Greek and Latin with perfect purity, and the elegance of her language was remarkable, as well as the quickness of her intellect.

Paula, full of anxiety for such a nature, sought to give her the counterpoise of solid piety. But Blesilla, though capable of exalted virtues, was intoxicated by the splendors of the sphere in which she was born and educated. Like all young girls of her rank, she loved dress, luxury, and entertainments, and neither the death of her father nor her mother's example had detached her heart from the world, neither did her early widowhood; for Paula had given her in marriage to a young and rich patrician of the race of Camillus, who died in a short time after, leaving Blesilla a widow and without children. But even this blow did not suffice, and, after the usual time given to mourning, the worldly and frivolous tastes of the young widow again rose to the surface. She passed many hours before her glass, busy in adorning herself, surrounded by her slaves occupied in dressing her hair and waiting on her, and entertainments of all sorts were her delight.

Paulina, the second daughter of Paula, was, as we have already said, a great contrast to her sister. Less brilliant, but not less agreeable, great good sense was her chief attribute, with sweetness of disposition. Less captivated by the world than Blesilla, she was more inclined to be pious. The equilibrium in her nature was excellent. But there was nothing in any way uncommon about her. She seemed born for the ordinary destiny of woman. She was now sixteen, and Paula, with an instinct truly maternal, felt that what she had to do for her child was to give her a protector worthy of her, in a husband of sound character and amiable disposition.

But the pearl of Paula's children was her third daughter, Eustochium, who was sweetness and candor itself, and all innocence and piety. Her distinguishing feature was her love for her mother, whom she never for a moment quitted. Marcella kept her with her for some time, and when the child returned to Paula, she clung more than ever to her mother, like a young vine. Her only wish was to follow in the footsteps of Paula and to be like her, and to consecrate herself also to the service of God with her young virginal heart. Soft and silent, but hiding under this veil of timidity a remarkable mind, Eustochium was formed for high purposes. She was not fourteen when St. Jerome came to Rome.

Rufina was then only eleven or twelve years of age, and the time had not yet come for anxiety about her. It was, however, different with Toxotius, who was younger still, but had not received baptism, his father's family having assumed his guardianship; and they were pagans, which grieved Paula, who hoped to make her son a fervent Christian.

Such was the family of Paula. Her many duties to them had excited the interest of the austere monk, who, together with Marcella, wished to do everything possible to aid Paula in her cares. Blesilla at once filled the mind of St. Jerome with the ardent wish to save her from the career of worldliness on which she seemed bent; but in vain did he try to bring her to grave thoughts. Paulina was easier to guide, for Providence aided the pious efforts of her friends in the husband chosen for her by her mother, who was Pammachius, of whom St. Jerome has said that he was "the most Christian of the noble Romans, and the most noble of the Christians." He was also the old and tried friend of St. Jerome, to whom this marriage gave great happiness, as well as to Paula and Marcella.

As for Eustochium, she continued to expand and bloom under the influence of her mother. In vain were the rich dresses of her sisters and their shining jewels spread out before her. Her taste for religious life was becoming more and more decided every day. Notwithstanding her great youth, none of the maidens of the Aventine surpassed her in prayer, or in following St. Jerome in his laborious studies of the Scriptures. She had learnt Hebrew, and, like her mother, had inspired St. Jerome with singular devotion and interest. The increasing vocation of Eustochium aroused opposition in her father's family; for it was not possible that the progress of monastic tendencies among the patrician women should be allowed to take root without resistance in Rome, where opposition was made by law to anything like celibacy for men, with open advocacy of matrimony and the honors of maternity for women.

St. Jerome undertook to modify these ideas with his powerful pen, and, in his answer to the attack of one named Helvidius, came off the field completely victorious.

It was about this time, 384 A.D., that Blesilla fell ill of a pernicious fever, which for a month threatened her life. This illness brought her wisdom. The following is the story of her conversion, from St. Jerome: "During thirty days," he says, "we saw our Blesilla burning with a devouring fever. She lay almost bereft of life, panting under the struggle with death, and trembling at the thought of the judgments of God. Where then was the help of those who gave her worldly counsels? of those who prevented her from living for Christ? Could they save her from death? No. But our Lord himself, seeing that she was only carried away by the intoxication of youth and the errors of her century, came to her, touched her hand, and cried out to her, as to Lazarus, 'Arise, come forth and walk!' She understood this call, and she arose and knew that she owed the boon of life to him who had given it back to her." She was then but twenty years of age, when she shone in her new-born beauty of holiness. She, who formerly passed long hours at her toilet, now sought only to find God; and, instead of the ornaments in which she had liked to appear, she now covered her fair head with the veil most becoming for a Christian woman. All the money that had been spent for adorning herself now went to the poor. And this ardent soul, once consecrated to God, gave itself up entirely, and, passing with a great flight beyond ordinary natures, at once reached the summit of human virtue and perfection.

Eustochium and Paula had not more ardor. Jerome was admirable in his manner of seconding this generous enthusiasm. He now instructed her in the Scriptures, and she studied first Ecclesiastes, then the gospels, and Isaiah. She learned Hebrew to read the Psalms. Her energy was wonderful, for her steps still tottered from illness, and her delicate neck drooped under the weight of her young head. But the divine book was never out of her hands.

How shall we paint the joy of Paula at this change in her beloved child! Her dearest wishes had been granted. This, too, was a fruitful conversion; others imitated such an example; and Paula's house soon became a sort of monastery, which Jerome would call the fireside church. He gives a most beautiful description of Paula and her children at this period, when the blessing of God was so visibly on her household. Her fervor increased. She determined on a complete sacrifice of her worldly goods, and, in the words of St. Jerome, "being already dead to the world, though still living, she distributed all her fortune among her children," thereby entirely initiating herself into the holy poverty of Christ. Notwithstanding all the consolations God had sent her, she was still uneasy and dissatisfied; her life was not yet all that she sighed for. A great disgust toward Rome filled her mind, and the descriptions Epiphanius had given her of the East rose up for ever in her, making her soul long for the monastic life of the desert. The example of Melanie was then to increase this longing, for Melanie had now been for some years realizing her dreams in her convent on the Mount of Olives.

There was now nothing to prevent Paula from going. Blesilla, as well as Eustochium, wished to follow their mother in her pilgrimage, and many of their friends desired to join them. St. Jerome, the veteran pilgrim, was to be their pilot to holy places. He had strengthened them all in the love of God and nourished them with the Holy Scriptures. His letters to Eustochium at this time were exquisite. What could be more touching than the friendship uniting the austere old monk and this sweet young maiden? "O my Eustochium! O my daughter! O my sister!" he wrote to her, "since my age and charity alike permit me to give you these names, if you are by birth the noblest of Roman virgins, I beseech you guard zealously your own heart and keep it from evil. Imitate our Lord Jesus Christ, be obedient to your parents, go out rarely, and honor the martyrs in the solitude of your chamber. Read often and you will learn much. Let sleep surprise you with the holy book in your hands, and, if your head drop down with fatigue, let it be on the sacred pages."

Eustochium was grateful to him for his wise counsels, and, wishing to express her appreciation of his letters to her, she gathered courage to send him a little offering of a basket of cherries, with several of those bracelets called armillae and some doves. The whole was accompanied by a sweet, girlish letter, full of affection. The cherries, she said, were a symbol of purity, to remind him of his letters; the bracelets were such as were given to reward brilliant deeds, and were to put him in mind of his own victories in controversy; and, lastly, the doves were emblematic of his tenderness to her from her childhood.

St. Jerome received with great kindness the little offerings of his spiritual daughter, and thanked her for them in a letter full of affection, mingled with the grave counsels which ever flowed from his pen.

The time was approaching for the departure of Paula for the East. It was in the autumn of 384 A.D., when Blesilla suddenly fell ill of the same fever which had once before laid her so low. The news of her illness filled her friends with consternation, for Blesilla was tenderly loved by them. She sank so rapidly that there was soon no hope left of her recovery. This was but four months after her conversion, and God already judged her ready for a better life, and called her to himself.

She was but twenty, and was going to die. Her mother, her sisters, her relations, her friends, Marcella and St. Jerome, all gathered around her death-bed in tears. Blesilla alone did not weep. Though the fever was consuming her, a ray of celestial light illuminated her countenance with a beauty not of earth, and transfigured her. Her only regret was, that her repentance had been so short. She turned to those who were around her: "Oh! pray for me," she cried, "to our Lord Jesus Christ, to have mercy on my soul, since I die before I have been able to accomplish what I had in my heart to do for him." These were her last words; every one present was moved to tears by them. Jerome eagerly offered consolation. "Trust in the Lord, dear Blesilla," said he; "your soul is as pure as the white robes you have worn since your consecration to God, which though but recent was so generous and complete that it came not too late." These words filled her soul with peace. And shortly afterward, to use the words of St. Jerome, "freeing herself from the pains of the body, this white dove flew off to heaven!"

Her obsequies were magnificent, followed by all the Roman nobles. Such was the custom of the patricians. A peculiar interest and sympathy were felt in the fate of this brilliant young woman, as well as universal compassion for the sorrow of her venerable mother. The long procession walked through the streets, followed by the coffin covered with a veil of gold. St. Jerome, though not approving of this display, dared not interfere to prevent it, as it seemed a sad consolation to Paula to see the honors paid to the child so tenderly loved. She undertook to accompany Blesilla to her last resting-place; but her strength failed, and, having taken but a few steps, she fainted away and was brought back to her house insensible.

The days that followed the funeral only increased her grief. She was crushed by it. In vain did she try to submit to the divine will, her heart failed her, and Jerome felt that he must make an effort to give her strength, or else she would succumb to the pressure. The effort was great on his part, for Blesilla was his beloved pupil, and this death annihilated all his own cherished hopes of her. He never found the courage to conclude a commentary, begun expressly for her, on Ecclesiastes. But feeling it a duty to help Paula, he wrote to her a letter filled with true delicacy of feeling and Christian faith. He commenced by weeping with her over the lost Blesilla, for he said: "While wishing to dry her mother's tears, am I not weeping myself?" He continued this noble letter in these words, alike reproachful and sympathizing: "When I reflect that you are a mother, I do not blame you for weeping; but when I reflect also that you are a Christian, then, O Paula! I wish that the Christian would console the mother a little."

He reminded her of the children she had left, and with all the authority of his holy office bid her take care lest, "in loving her children so much, she did not love God enough." "Listen," he says, "to Jesus, and trust in him: 'Your daughter is not dead, but sleepeth.'"

Then Jerome would picture to Paula her daughter in all her celestial glory. He would suppose Blesilla calling upon her mother in these words: "If you have ever loved me, O my mother! if you have ever nourished me from your bosom, and trained my soul with your words of wisdom and virtue, oh! I conjure you, do not lament that I have such glory and happiness as is mine here! What prayers does Blesilla not now offer up for you to God!" And St. Jerome adds, "She is praying for me also, for you know, O Paula! how devoted I was to her soul, and what I did not fear to brave, that she might be saved."

St. Jerome's letter awoke new Christian strength and resignation in the broken spirit of Paula. The tears ceased to flow, but the wound bled inwardly and never healed. The void left by Blesilla in her mother's heart must ever make it desolate. Rome became insupportable to her, and the pilgrimage to the East, so long thought of, seemed now the only thing that could interest her. About this time Pope Damasus died. He was a great loss to St. Jerome, for his successor had not the same moral courage, and dared not sustain the old monk in advocating monastic life, which so enraged the patricians.

Finally, worn out by persecution, and perhaps longing to return to that solitude he had never ceased to regret, Jerome determined to leave Rome. This was in the year 385 A.D. His friends were only waiting for his signal to accompany him in numbers, and many were the tears shed by his gentle pupils in Rome at his departure. His farewell letter to them all was addressed to the venerable Asella, through whom he sent his last greetings to Paula, Eustochium, Albina, Marcella, Marcellina, and Felicity, "his sisters in Jesus Christ." Many of these he was destined to see no more. But the decision of Paula was irrevocable. She had no longer any earthly tie to detain her. Her son, moved by the example of his mother and sisters, had received Christian baptism, and was soon to marry a young Christian maiden, the cousin of Marcella. Rufina was to remain during her mother's absence with her sister Paulina and Pammachius, and also with Marcella, her second mother.

Eustochium was to accompany her mother, as well as a large number of the pious community of the Aventine. They left Rome in the autumn of 385 A.D. Paula courageously bid farewell to her children, and the friends who had followed in troops to see her embark. Leaning on the arm of Eustochium, she was seen on the deck of the vessel, her eyes averted, that her strength might not fail her as she witnessed the sorrow of her loved ones whom she was leaving. For St. Jerome tells us, "Paula loved her children more than any other woman."

The voyage was favorable, the vessel touching at many places of classic interest. When they finally reached Salamines in the Island of Cyprus, what was her joy on finding her venerable friend, St. Epiphanius, waiting on the shore to receive her, happy in being able to return the hospitality he had enjoyed under her roof in Rome three years before.

The Island of Cyprus was filled with monasteries and convents founded and protected by Epiphanius, which were a great attraction to Paula. Holy hymns were sung where Venus but lately had reigned supreme; and the grave of the holy patriarch Hilarion stood near the ruins of the ancient temple of the heathen goddess.

After leaving Cyprus, Paula went to Antioch. There Jerome and the priests and monks who had accompanied him from Rome were awaiting her with Paulinus, the bishop. They wished to detain her; but since her feet had touched land her ardor to reach Jerusalem had so increased that nothing could stop her. To follow the footsteps of Christ, to see where his precious blood was shed, then to visit the anachorites of the desert, such was Paula's thought. Eustochium and her companions shared this desire. No time was lost. A caravan was organized, Jerome and his friends on dromedaries, Paula and her suite on asses, and they began their journey together. The road from Antioch to Jerusalem was long and fatiguing for women so delicately bred. A journey in those days was full of perils of which we now have no idea. But Paula was indefatigable, deterred by no dangers and complaining of no inconveniences, as she crossed the icy plains at this most trying season of the year. St. Jerome tells of the cities that she saw, and of the emotions that she felt as her knowledge of Scripture and of holy books brought up recollections and associations either of Jewish or of Christian history wherever she went. Besides, Jerome was there, with his prodigious memory and knowledge, to throw light on every step.

As Paula approached Jerusalem, her soul was more deeply moved, than it had yet been. The view of the landscape around the city was desolate, even as early as the fourth century. She entered by the Gate of Jaffa, also called the Gate of David and the Gate of the Pilgrims. The proconsul of Palestine had sent an escort to meet her, to receive her with honor; but with that sentiment which later made Godefroi de Bouillon refuse to wear a golden crown where God had worn one of thorns, Paula refused to lodge in the palace offered for her convenience, and she and her whole suite staid at a modest dwelling not far from Calvary; then she started at once to visit the Holy Places. Who can describe her feelings as she entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre? In the fourth century, the stone which closed the entrance to the tomb of our Lord was still to be seen by the faithful pilgrims. To-day it is covered by a monument of marble. As soon as Paula saw it, with great emotion she embraced it; but when she entered into the sepulchre itself, and went up to the rock on which had laid the body of our Lord, she could no longer restrain her tears, and, falling on her knees, sobbed and wept abundantly. All Jerusalem saw these tears, and were edified at the great piety of this noble Roman lady, the daughter of the Scipios.

St. Jerome tells us that, while she was in Jerusalem, "she would see everything," and that "she was only dragged away from one holy place that she might be taken to another."

After having visited Jerusalem, the pilgrims travelled all over the Holy Land, commencing with Bethlehem and Judea, then visiting Jericho and the Jordan, Samaria and Galilee as far as Nazareth, and finally, reorganizing the caravan, they set out for Egypt; not, however, before paying a visit to Melanie, in her convent on the Mount of Olives, whence they returned to Jerusalem.

Paula would now have fixed herself at Bethlehem but for this longing to visit the fathers of the desert. They started on this, the longest and most fatiguing part of their journey, and were sixteen days in going from Jerusalem to Alexandria. This city was the Athens of the East. In such an atmosphere of learning, there had been great intellectual development among the Christians, and the school of Christian philosophers of Alexandria was renowned throughout the world. This was what detained Paula and Eustochium, and particularly Jerome, some time at Alexandria, where they were received with great hospitality by the bishop, Theophilus. But even the most interesting studies could not make Paula forget the principal object of her voyage to Egypt, and her desire to see and to know the ascetics, that wonderful class of men, who voluntarily exiled themselves from the world and from all human ties, and astonished mankind by incredible austerities, and by consecrating their lives entirely to spiritual things and to a future existence. At this time the number of these anachorites had so multiplied, that it was said that in Egypt the deserts had as many inhabitants as the cities. Monastic life was then in all its glory. The great anachorites, Paul, Antony, Hilarion, and Pacomius, were dead; but their disciples lived, as celebrated as themselves. A great work of organization had been accomplished among them. The first men who came to the desert lived alone in caves or cells, each following his individual inspiration. Paul had lived forty years in a grotto, at the entrance of which was a spring and a palm-tree, drinking the water of the spring and eating the fruit of the tree, being his only nourishment. Antony's life had been more extraordinary still. But when the number of the hermits increased, they felt the necessity of community life being established, and the cenobites began to take the place of the anachorites, though there remained many of the latter, dividing, as it were, the hermits into two kinds, the Anachorites and the Cenobites. Large convents spread out along the banks of the Nile to the furthest extremity of Egypt.

It was not easy to visit these establishments. In going there, many years before, Melanie and her companions had been lost for five days, and their provisions being exhausted they had nearly died of hunger and thirst in the desert. Crocodiles, basking in the sun, had awaited with open jaws to devour them, and numberless other dangers had beset them.

But this did not discourage Paula, and her route being happily chosen, she accomplished her journey safely to the mountain of Nitria, where five thousand cenobites lived in fifty different convents, under the rule of one abbot. The news of her coming had preceded her, and the Bishop of Heliopolis had come to welcome the noble lady. He was surrounded by a great crowd of cenobites and anachorites. As soon as they perceived the caravan, they came forward singing hymns. Paula was soon surrounded. She declared herself most unworthy of the honors accorded her, and at the same time glorified God, who worked such marvels in the desert. The bishop first conducted the pious band to the church situated on the summit of the mountain, and there, with that hospitality for which the monks of the East were ever remarkable, the travellers were given the best rooms attached to the convent and intended for the use and convenience of strangers. Fresh water was brought to them to wash their feet, and linen to dry them, and the fruits of the desert to refresh their palates; after which they were allowed to visit the convents and the hermits, whose life was very simple and very free, at the same time holy and austere. Ambitious of reducing the body to servitude, and to penetrate the secrets of things divine, they united action with contemplation. Their days were passed between work and prayer. Some were to be seen digging the earth, cutting trees, fishing in the Nile, or perhaps plaiting the mats on which they were to die. Others were absorbed by the reading of, or meditation on, the Holy Scriptures. The monasteries swarmed like bee-hives.

After having witnessed the cenobitical life, Paula went to the desert of cells to see the anachorite life, which there was carried out in all its austerity and all its poetry. These monks had no walls built by man, but had retired to the mountains as to the most inaccessible asylums. Caverns and rocks were their dwellings, the earth their table, their food roots and wild plants, and water from the springs their refreshment. Their prayers were continual, and all the mountain hollows rang with God's praises. These grottoes did not communicate with each other, and the isolation of the anachorites was complete. Once a week, on Sunday only, they left their cells, and, dressed in robes made of palm-leaves or of sheepskin, they went to the church of Nitria, where they saw one another, and also met the cenobites. Paula wished to know and listen to these pious men. She therefore visited all the grottoes, one by one, talking always of the things of God to their inmates.

Paula's next visit was through a still more savage country to see those called by St. Jerome "the columns of the desert." She cared not for dangers nor fatigue, so that she could contemplate such men as Macarius—the disciple of Antony and Pacomius—a man so austere that he had astonished Pacomius himself, who had watched him during the whole of one Lent plaiting mats in his cell, without speaking to any one, all absorbed in God, and only eating once a week, on Sunday, a few raw vegetables. None could surpass this great ascetic. He permitted the pilgrims to penetrate into his grotto, and delighted Paula with his holy conversation and instruction.

Jerome admired likewise the prodigies of this pure and austere life; but more occupied than Paula with the doctrines he heard discussed, he had perceived that some of the monks were less enlightened than others. It seems, as it afterward was proved, that the theories of Origen were already beginning to trouble the inhabitants of the desert.

There remained now, to complete Paula's insight into the life of the hermits, but to visit the convents founded by Pacomius, which she hesitated not to do. There were six thousand monks living in them, governed by the venerable Serapion. Their rule divided each monastery into a certain number of families. Their frugal lives enabled them to extend their charities far and wide. Their fasting and abstinence lasted all the year round, becoming only more strict in Lent. Paula enjoyed their hospitality greatly, learning much from Serapion that delighted her about this well-organized monastic life which realized her ideal.

She thought for a moment of establishing herself in the desert, and of requesting Serapion to admit her colony under the rule of Pacomius; but the love of the Holy Places prevented her from carrying out this plan. She said "her resting-place was not in these deserts, it was in Bethlehem." Already had she lingered too long! She had now learned all that she wished to learn, enough for her own guidance. She therefore embarked with her entire caravan for Maioma, a sea-port of Gaza; and from there, without stopping on her way, she returned to Jerusalem, and thence to Bethlehem, with as much rapidity, says St. Jerome, as if she had had wings.

Here the news awaited her of the death of her daughter Rufina. The blow was terrible to Paula, but her mind was strengthened by all she had seen, and the voice of God reached her heart and comforted her, and gave her stronger hope than she had ever had in reunion hereafter with her beloved children. She sought to make herself worthy of immortality, and her faith and her good works brought her consolation and peace. She resolved to found two monasteries: one for herself, Eustochium, and her friends from the Aventine; the other for Jerome and his followers. This was done without delay, and they at once began the life which they longed for—a life of labor, of study, and of prayer.

To Be Continued.

To The Count De Montalembert,
With A Copy Of "Inisfail." [Footnote 149]

[Footnote 149: From a forthcoming volume of Poems, by Aubrey de Vere, now in press by the Catholic Publication Society.]

Your spirit walks in halls of light:
On earth you breathe its sunnier climes:
How can an Irish muse invite
Your fancy thus to sorrowing rhymes?

But you have fought the church's fight!
My country's cause and hers are one:
And every cause that rests on Right
Invokes Religion's bravest son.

The Legend of Glastonbury.—A. D. 62.

Down in the pleasant west of England a river—the copious Brue—follows its course to Bridgewater Bay, between the Sedgemoors and other rising grounds. Somersetshire farmers now drive their ploughs and graze their cattle where I am going to describe water: thanks to those Benedictine monks whom they have so clean forgotten. But at Christmas-tide, some sixty years after the first Christmas the world ever saw, there were no monks at Glastonbury; for the simple reason, there were no Christians there. No one had banked out the waters of the Bristol Channel, and converted a brackish and unwholesome swamp into fine arable or pasture land. The Brue had it all its own way, to make islands, pools, and treacherous bogs with its unrestrained waters; until it had got so far west as to struggle with the advancing tide of the bay.

Glastonbury has the holiest memories of any place in England; and they date from the first moment when the faith was planted there. The sacred name of our Lord was brought to this marshy district in a far-off heathen land by one of his own disciples, Saint Joseph of Arimathea.

Who has not heard of the Glastonbury thorn? A history of Somerset would be incomplete which did not mention its blossoming every Christmas that comes round. It was fair and fragrant for fifteen hundred winters, while all around was sapless and dead. People try to account for this standing miracle by something peculiar in the soil, as they would explain away the freedom of Ireland from snakes and toads, or the healing virtues of St. Winifred's Well. There were probably Sadducees in Jerusalem who thought the Pool of Bethesda was all nonsense, or a mere chalybeate. Anything you like about the powers of nature, but nothing of the marvels of grace. Chemistry to any extent, but of miracle not one jot. Thorns blooming at Christmas? It is all a question of earth, soil, stratum, and the lay of the ground, with those who are "of the earth, earthy."

But we are now on our way to Glastonbury as Christian pilgrims, staff in hand. And it is very fit that we should regard the old thorn (or such suckers and cuttings of it as may be found) with reverence. For that thorn is a Christian tree, planted by Christian hands. More than this: it was planted by the hands whose unutterable privilege it was to unfasten and take down from the cross, and bear with adoring reverence to the tomb, the body of God, separated from his soul, united ever with his divinity.

We are accustomed, in our meditations on the passion, to contemplate the emaciated, agonized form of our Lord stretched and racked upon the cross; or, after the Consummatum est, when eventide was come, laid stark and bloodless in the arms of the Queen of martyrs, his most desolate Mother. Naturally we lose out of sight, by comparison, other agents and events in what followed his expiring cry. Yet look again. In the growing dusk of that first Good Friday, at the foot of the cross, and in the group of five or six persons to whom the eternal Father seems to commit the lifeless body of his Son, there is the saint of Glastonbury. With the dolorous Mother, and the beloved disciple, and the saintly, penitent Magdalene, and the other holy women, and Nicodemus, St. Joseph of Arimathea also bears his part.

To come back to Glastonbury; we must pass over some thirty years from that sacred paschal eve. Pentecost soon followed it, with its fiery tongues on the apostles' brows. They were illuminated and strengthened to preach the faith over the earth lying in darkness. So they separated on this world-wide mission, each on the path whereon the guidance of God's Spirit led him. "Their sound went over all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world." St. Philip went into Phrygia, and, by some accounts, was martyred there. Others make him to have preached the gospel in what is now France, and that St. Joseph was one of his companions. A better supported tradition has it that St. Joseph, with St. Lazarus and his two holy sisters, Martha and Mary, landed at Marseilles from Judea. Anyhow, here comes St. Joseph of Arimathea to Britain, with a faithful band of eleven disciples. He has reached the distant region of tin-mines which the old Phoenicians had discovered and worked in Cornwall, Scilly, and, perhaps, the Mendip Hills. He is come not for precious metals, but to bring the priceless word of life.

So, rather more than sixty years after the Incarnation, and while Saints Peter and Paul are still alive in Rome, though the day of their martyrdom draws near, we find ourselves on the brow of Weary-All Hill, a mile or so south-west of the spot where Glastonbury Abbey will be built.

Weary-All Hill! the name it has been known by for generations back. But not a likely name to be given it by St. Joseph and his eleven companions, as they stood on it for the first time, eighteen centuries ago; as they looked on the marshy plain, dotted with islands, in and out of which the glassy stream is winding. Weariness, at least lassitude of spirit, was unknown to those apostolic men. Had they not come all this way to bring the everlasting gospel? Had not their feet been "beautiful upon the mountains" as they crossed them, bearing this message of heavenly love?—mountains deep in snow, yawning with frightful clefts and precipices, gloomy with impenetrable forests, to which this Weary-All is scarcely a mole-hill?

"At length, then," said St. Joseph, when the twelve had paused on the brow of it to recover breath; for few of them were young, and it was rather a pull for a Somersetshire hill—"at length we have reached the end of our pilgrimage."

As he spoke, he pointed with his long staff to the little group of islands already noticed. A cheery December sun lingered on the scene, and, though it was evening, still cast a gleam upon the wide-spread water. The Brue was winding along, noiseless and limpid, sprinkled with its dark islets, as the shining coils of a snake are variegated with the spots upon its skin. There was no ice yet, though it was already the Christmas season. Perhaps the sea-water that mingled with the marsh from the Bristol Channel prevented its formation. The leafless thickets that fringed the slopes of West Sedgemoor, and clothed both islands and marshland in irregular clumps, allowed a more distinct view of the mirror of waters than when shaded with summer foliage. There was a kind of grave and sober animation over the whole scene.

A short distance further off, to the east, rose a solitary peaked hill, perhaps even then called the Tor. It has several scarped lines, or passes, drawn around it, denoting that the Romans had fortified it as a stronghold, which they occupied from time to time. Years after, a little chapel in honor of St. Michael the archangel will be built on its summit. Years later, again, that little chapel will be enlarged into a stately church, the tower of which still remains. And nearly fifteen centuries after St. Joseph first stood on Weary-All, the last abbot of the stately Benedictine monastery, as Glastonbury had become, was martyred there with two of his monks. His crime was, that he rendered to Caesar only those things that were Caesar's, and refused to acknowledge the tyrant Henry VIII. as head of God's church in England.

Northward of where we stand, at the distance of five miles and more, the abrupt range of the Mendip Hills caught at that moment almost the last beams of the declining sun, as it sank, fiery red, toward the western ocean.

"The end of our pilgrimage," said St. Joseph again, slowly, and gazed down on the peaceful spot. "These are the islands of which the heathen king spoke:—how are we to name him?"

"Arviragus," answered one of his companions, nay, it was the saint's own nephew, called Helaius.

"Permitting us to set up there a Christian altar, and to proclaim the names and the praises of Jesus and Mary."

"May the kindness be returned a hundred-fold into his own bosom," ejaculated Theotimus.

"Amen," answered St. Joseph fervently. And Joseph his son, and Simeon and Avitus, and the rest, responded.

Then all knelt there on the brow of the hill; all but Hoel, their poor pagan guide to the spot. And with Christian psalms, and the Gloria Patri, and invocations to the court of heaven to assist them in their praises, they poured out thanksgivings to him who had permitted their long wanderings to cease, and their missionary life in this heathen land to begin.

Hoel stood near, leaning on his shepherd's crook. He guessed in general what it was about; but he understood neither Hebrew nor Greek.

He is a true Briton of that date, is Hoel; and he might literally be called "true blue," for he is painted all over in blue patterns with the juice of the woad, like his northern cousins, the Picts. His scanty garments are dyed the same hue with the same plant, which yields its juice plentifully in this part of Britain.

He looks at the saint, and thinks he is inquiring the name of that principal island in the group to which his staff points.

"Iniswytryn," cries Hoel, in explanation. "You're Latin scholars, gentlemen; so I suppose you know what that means—Glassy Island." [Footnote 150]

[Footnote 150: Insula Vitrea, the Roman and therefore the British name (by a slight corruption) of what was afterward called Glastonbury. Glas is the Celtic word for grayish blue, [Greek text] and enters into numerous local names in Ireland, Wales, and the Highlands. Its affinity with our word glass is probably more than a coincidence of sound, the ancient glass being mostly of the same neutral tint. Others derive the name of the place from the woad-plant, glaisn, which grows abundantly in this watered district.]

Glass, in those days, imported by the Romans into Britain, sorry stuff as the best of it would now be reckoned in the Birmingham or St. Helen's foundries, was thought a wonder of rarity and beauty. So Glassy Island was a name equivalent to our calling another island that we love very dearly the

"First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."

Hoel now spoke again in the same strange jargon as before, composed of British, or what we should call Welsh, and a little Latin. It was the dialect of those parts of Britain where the Romans had established their colonies and introduced their tongue. Be it noted, we are at this moment near the Roman colonies of Uxella, or Bridgewater, Ad Aquas, or Wells, and Ischalis, or Ilchester.

"So you are going to settle down there," remarked Hoel. "Won't you offer some sacrifice on first sighting the place?"

"We have no means of sacrificing this evening, friend," answered St. Joseph calmly, "nor to-morrow morning, I fear, unless we obtain materials, which at present we lack."

"Means!—materials!" said Hoel, musing with himself. "Well, every nation, I take it, has its own customs. But I know those who would not be long without providing the materials."

St. Joseph wished to ascertain what was passing in the man's mind. The zeal which urged St. Paul to become all things to all men, that he might save all, burned in the holy missionary's bosom. It made him seek out all that might serve the purpose of his coming. He had everything to learn: language, habits of thought, customs of social life, and the very observances of British heathenism.

"And how," he asked, "would you offer a sacrifice, good friend, when you had nothing to offer it with?"

"I? Nay, I could not. What good would a sacrifice be from a peasant like me?"

"To pray is to make an offering, is it not?"

"Yes; but I don't mean that. You know I mean something more; why, something really sacrificed—consumed, to make the gods favorable. Have you no such sacrifice in your religion? Then it can't be the true one, I'm sure!"

"Certainly," said St. Joseph, "we have the one true and adorable Sacrifice, of which all others are mere shadows, and some of them very dark, distorted shadows. Every morning we offer to the true and living God that spotless Lamb who alone can take away sin, or be a worthy thank-offering to his majesty and his mercy."

"A lamb?" said Hoel, still musing; "why, that's not to be had at this season. But would nothing else do instead? For example, now, I've a nice—"

"Do not concern yourself," answered St. Joseph, and smiled again, kindly. "We shall be able to provide ourselves in a few days, when we have made acquaintance with the neighborhood. I suppose they grow wine in these parts?"

"Wine?" repeated the peasant, opening his eyes. "Oh! yes, to be sure." Then, after a pause: "You're fond of wine, then, after all, like our own Druids? Well, I should hardly have thought—"

Helaius could hardly repress a smile at his mistake.

Hoel looked at him; then, as if he had hit on the cause of his amusement, laughed his loud clownish laugh, too.

"Wine? Ah! the very best, if you can buy it of those gray-bearded gentlemen; and old mead, and metheglin; or cider from our apples hereabout. We grew a mortal sight of 'em." [Footnote 151]

[Footnote 151: Glastonbury was afterward called by the Saxons Avalon, or the Island of Apples.]

Then he broke out into singing, and a kind of war-dance, to please his companions, as he deemed:

"All under yon oaks, and the mistletoe sprouting.
When victims have bled in the circle of stones.
We drink down the sunset with sword-play and shouting,
And he that refuses, we'll raddle his bones:
His bones!
And he that refuses, we'll raddle his bones!"

It was difficult not to smile at his extravagant tones and gestures.

"Gently, gently," said St. Joseph to his companions, "or we shall be misleading him, and doing harm."

"Oh! never mind, ancient sir," remarked Hoel encouragingly, though he had not understood what was said. "All quite right—why shouldn't one? Only, it strikes me, you've no place to lay in a stock of it at present. Now, our Druids burrow out caves, 'tis thought, somewhere under their cromlechs—"

"Listen!" interrupted St. Joseph, laying his hand on the other's arm. He looked into Hoel's face, and gained his attention in a moment. "Listen, while I say a thing to you. Bread and wine, the ordinary food of man in our native land, have been appointed by him whom we serve, as the materials of that true sacrifice which he will accept. He requires, and will admit, no other. Animals were sacrificed to him of old, before he appointed this new and better way; but now—"

"You spoke of a lamb," interrupted the peasant, growing rather sulky, "so I just took the liberty of informing you as we'd none at your service."

It was not the moment to pursue such high and mysterious truths with him any further. But Hoel himself would not be let off, nor would he let off St. Joseph. Something seemed to be working in his mind.

"A lamb is a lamb," persisted he doggedly, though he seemed to mean no disrespect; "and a sacrifice is a sacrifice; and bread is bread, I hope; and wine, I'm sure, is wine."

"All things are what they have been created by God," answered St. Joseph very gently, "until it is his holy will and pleasure to change them in any way, or even to change them into other things."

Hoel looked at him, but said nothing. His look, though, meant inquiry, and this St. Joseph perceived.

"Is not a tree changed into something very different from what it was before," he went on, "when the warm air of spring breathes upon it, and the sap rises into it, and it puts forth green buds, and they swell, and burst, and afterward come leaves and fruit?"

"True," answered he; and then was silent, thinking.

"Did you ever see one of the trees down yonder blossom at this season?"

For all answer, Hoel laughed, and pointed to the leafless boughs on the island, and the shores around them.

"Could the gods whom you worship cause them to do so?"

"Not one of 'em all," answered he, with a somewhat scornful gesture.

"Then, who makes winter pass and spring return; the bud burst forth, and the fruit ripen?"

A pause. The poor pagan was not prepared to answer.

"Now," continued St. Joseph, "my God, the one living and true, not only has appointed the laws by which seasons come round with their produce, and the sun rises and sets. He sometimes, moreover, changes these things, according to his own all-perfect will, so that the sun stays motionless in the heavens above, and the tree blooms in mid-winter on the earth below."

Hoel mused, and mused again, while his eyes wandered from the speaker to the rest, in whose looks he read confirmation of the words. Then he turned to take a sweep over the wintry scene that lay beneath and around. Woods and thickets skirting the slopes of Sedgemoor, the osiers lining the banks of the Brue, the few apple-trees that were even then on Iniswytryn—all without sign of a leaf.

He bent his eyes to the ground, knit his brows, seemed determined to hear no more, and to believe nothing of what he had heard.

Still the gentle, persuasive voice of the saint sounded in his ears:

"What is that, friend, you have in your hand?"

"My shepherd's crook," was the brief and surly answer.

"And see, my pilgrim-staff, that has aided my steps so far. Yours was cut from a British sapling, out of your moist soil, I dare say, no longer ago than last autumn. Mine, under a burning sky, long years since, in Judea, a land you never heard of. It came from a thorn-brake that had furnished thorns for a crown of which you know nothing. Which of these two staves would bud the quickest, if they were planted side by side?"

Hoel looked up, pleased to find something he understood. "Mine would, of course," he grinned out. "'Tis a right slip of mountain-ash, and would have leaves next spring, if I struck it into the ground."

"And what if mine now budded before you could count ten?"

"You jest with me where I see no jest," exclaimed the countryman, disposed now to be angry, "or you speak as one of the unwise."

"There is no jest here," answered St. Joseph with unruffled look. You say truly. By no power of mine could the seasons alter, or the effects of them. My Master has said: 'All the days of the earth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, shall not cease!' But what if his power and his will unite to make some wonderful change in all this?"

"His power is great in the summer," answered Hoel, casting a look at the declining sun; "but in the winter time he seems further off, or feebler. He cannot melt the ice, nor draw up the dew, nor warm my fingers while I stand watching my sheep."

It was plain he was speaking of his deity, then sinking in the west, lower every moment.

"Ah!" said Avitus, "is it even such darkness as this into which the land is plunged? Would we had pushed on sooner from Gaul!"

"Courage, brother," whispered Simeon in answer. "There has been no time lost, Man can do but little, except pray and obey. If he does these well, he does good all around him. What says the holy text? 'Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful in a little.'"

Meanwhile St. Joseph had been in silent prayer. By some inspiration he felt moved to ask for power to work the first miracle ever wrought in Britain. Our Lord had promised: "These signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." "Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he shall do also; and greater than these shall he do, because I go to the Father. And whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, that will I do; that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

And even while St. Joseph prayed, it seemed as if witnesses of the miracle, and disciples of the truth, were being given him; for, stealing up the ascent from various directions, knots of the wild Britons, in threes and fours, converged on the summit of Weary-All Hill. I do not suspect Hoel of treachery, or that he had meant to lead the foreigners into a snare. It is likely the rude inhabitants had perceived them from afar as they stood there, their forms traced on the hill-top against the red sunset sky. But these new-comers seemed to have no friendly intention. Most of them held in their hands the rude weapons of ancient British warfare. The bare arms of some were stained blue with the juice of the woad; others were tattooed; they had the wild and savage look we have seen in prints of the Sandwich Islanders. So, with threatening aspect and gestures, on they came, brandishing their lances and celts, or bronze hatchets, and beginning a sort of war-cry.

Yes; the moment was come, and the sovereignty of the true Lord both over nature and grace was to be manifested in one and the same moment.

St. Joseph told his companions how strongly the thought had come into his mind. It had, indeed, guided much that he had already said to Hoel. As by one impulse, they all knelt again, and besought our Lord to remember now his promise; so that the soul that had remained impervious to his word might see his work.

St. Joseph then approached the peasant, who by this time was surrounded by his countrymen. In a mild voice, yet with an authority not to be resisted, he said:

"Plant your staff here, upright in the ground."

Hoel was startled, looked at him, then slowly obeyed.

The multitude still gathered, their gestures more threatening every moment.

"Call now, if you will, on your gods, that the staff may bud and blossom."

The peasant turned by a kind of instinct to the setting sun; clouds were mantling round it; its form was veiled; nothing seen but a dull and rusty stain of sunset fast paling into twilight. Hoel shook his head.

"You will not call on it to hear, to help you?"

He was answered by a gesture which implied that the power of Hoel's god was set for that night.

Then St. Joseph, with another ejaculation of prayer, struck his thorny staff into the ground beside the other. He made over it the sign of the cross, saying:

"By the grace of him who for us men hung on the tree on Calvary, wearing the thorny crown, I bid thee be as thou wert wont to be in the bloom of spring!"

There was still light enough to see how, here and there on the length of the staff, the shrivelled rind began to swell and to break, how the green buds shot forth and lengthened into twigs; how these ramified out again, branch from branch, sucker after sucker; how the old staff expanded into a shapely trunk of thorn-tree, crowned with a pollard head of rustling leaves.

And then through the keen wintry air was wafted such a fragrance as had never saluted the senses of shepherd, or of dreaming bard, wandering through the brakes and thickets of leafy May. The seasons had been reversed at the strong prayer of the just. He who enabled Josue to command the greater and lesser light in the firmament, "Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon," now honored the name of the true Josue, the Captain of salvation, by the "things that spring up in the earth," [Footnote 152] which obey their Lord as perfectly as sun, and moon, and stars.

[Footnote 152: Benedicite omnia germinantia in terrâ Domino.—Dan. iii. 76.]

What cries of astonishment broke from the rude men who crowded round! How they came trembling to the feet of St. Joseph; how they kissed the hem of his robe, and adored him as a god! They thought he was Baal himself; they shrieked out that the sun had set in clouds because Baal had come in person to take the place of his representative. And though St. Joseph and his companions testified by signs of abhorrence and earnest words how much the rude impiety disturbed them, yet, "Speaking these things, they scarce restrained the people from sacrificing to them." [Footnote 153]

[Footnote 153: Acts xiv. 17.]

But this reverence, misguided and idolatrous at first, soon found its true channel, and was directed to the Giver of every best gift. And so the gospel was preached in Glastonbury, and grew, and flourished, and breathed out its fragrance like the thorn itself.

Then, after nearly fifteen hundred years, came a winter more killing than any Christmas during which the thorn had bloomed; and "a famine, not of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord." The decree of spoliation went forth; the royal commissioners, with a warrant from Henry VIII., thundered at the gates. The choir of Glastonbury, as of numerous other shrines in England, was desecrated; treasures of literature in the library and scriptorium were torn in shreds and scattered to the winds, with the relics of innumerable saints. The abbot, and two of his brethren, were drawn on a hurdle to the Tor, and martyred on its summit; the community dispersed, and the ruins, covering many acres, were given over to strangers, as a stable for their cattle.

But this was long after St. Joseph and his companions had been gathered to the saints.

The Sun. [Footnote 154]

[Footnote 154: This lecture was delivered by M. Secchi to the scholars of the school of Saint Genevieve, on the 28th of July last, at a scientific soirée, presided over by Mgr. Chigi. It occupied two hours in the delivery, during the whole of which time the lecturer held captive the attention of his distinguished audience, who testified their appreciation of its scientific and literary merits by warm applause. The lecture will speak for itself. But in publishing it, there is one thing which cannot be reproduced; that is, the deep interest which necessarily attaches to the hearing a learned man himself explain his experiments and his discoveries. A number of figures were necessary for the illustration of certain parts of the lecture; and these, prepared from M. Secchi's designs by M. Duboscq, optician, were projected on a screen, by the aid of the electric light, thus enabling the spectators to follow the learned astronomer with greater ease. Of these designs, etc., only the most essential have been given in the published lecture.]

Gentlemen: From the beginning of my stay in Paris, I was invited by persons to whom I owe great deference to lecture to you on some of the subjects which are studied at the Observatory of the Roman College. This invitation I felt to be in the nature of a command, which I would readily have obeyed long before, had I not been prevented by numerous and incessant cares. I cannot, however, leave France without discharging the debt; and it is for this purpose that we have met together, on the present occasion. I propose to speak to you of the sun, and to show you what science teaches us of its physical constitution. For eighteen years I have studied the sun, and observed all that passes over its surface. I hope, also, to interest you in acquainting you not only with the fruit of my own labors, but also with the discoveries of my learned contemporaries.

What is the sun? Such is the question which has been frequently asked me. I confess it has always perplexed me to reply to it. I should not be pardoned, perhaps, if I should say I know nothing of the matter; nevertheless, it is impossible for me to give a complete and satisfactory answer. You yourselves have addressed this question to me with an eagerness which I appreciate as a particular honor; and, in responding to your desire, I am going to place before you the very interesting results which we have obtained in the study of this luminary, to which, after God, its creator, we owe all the physical blessings we enjoy here below.

To deal with this vast subject in something like an orderly form, let us speak first of the new means of observation with which modern science has furnished us; after which we shall see what advantage we have derived from them, and in what way they have served to make us better acquainted with the sun.

Astronomers, gentlemen, are not privileged beings. Like simple mortals, they are dazzled by the sun. Far from sharing the penetrating sight which poets accord to the eagle, they cannot fix their gaze on the bright orb of day without exposing their eyes to the greatest danger; and this danger becomes more serious if they employ their instruments for this purpose without taking proper precautions. Until recently, two means have been employed to protect the eyes of the observer: first, the reduction of the objective aperture of the glasses; and second, providing strongly-colored glasses. These two expedients present the most serious inconveniences. The first deprives the observer of the advantages which he would gain from the large apertures, and the confusion of the image is greatly augmented by the diffraction which the small diaphragms cause the light to undergo; while the second will not permit of our distinguishing the different colors which may meet in the sun; and on this account the observer is liable to fall into very grievous errors. The means now in use effectually obviate this double inconvenience, inasmuch as they allow of the use of the entire aperture of the glasses, and leave to the different parts of the sun their natural color. The first means consists of the employment of the reflective glass. A rectangular prism of crystal is disposed in such a manner as that its hypothenuse has an inclination of 45 degrees on the axis of the glass. The light, on reaching the surface, divides itself into two very unequal parts. The reflected rays are rather feeble, but of sufficient brightness to make them pass through a glass faintly colored, falling perpendicularly on one of the faces of the prism, without reaching the eye of the observer. The colored glass, not having to sustain so high a temperature, is not so liable to break, as often happened in the old method.

If the colored glass is completely done away with, we shall succeed by adopting a method which rests on the properties of polarized light. When the light is reflected by a glass mirror under an angle of 35 degrees 25 minutes, it undergoes a modification which is called polarization. If the rays thus polarized are received on a second glass mirror under the same inclination of 35 degrees 25 minutes, they will divide into two parts, one part of which will traverse the glass, and the other will undergo a second reflection. The quantity of light reflected by the second mirror will depend on the relative position of the two surfaces of reflection. It will be at the maximum if these surfaces are parallel, but otherwise if they are perpendicular; so that, by varying the relative position of the two mirrors to each other, we may either augment or diminish gradually the intensity of the reflected rays. Such is the property of the polarized light, which is utilized for making observations of the sun. To the eye-glass of the instrument are fixed two smooth mirrors, so adjusted as to make to the direction which the light follows an angle equal to the angle of polarization. One of these mirrors can turn round to the reflected rays. Then, by putting the surface of the second almost perpendicular to that of the first, we can observe the sun as easily as we can the moon, seeing it in its natural color, and we can regulate at will the intensity of the light. It is to this new arrangement of the eye-glasses that we owe the greater part of the discoveries of which I am about to speak to you. I ought to add, however, that in the astronomical glasses we employ not only two, but three and even four, of these reflections.

But to come to the consideration of the sun. Everybody knows that it has spots; that these spots, relatively very small, are of a black color, and also, that they adhere to the body of the sun. They move in a manner leading us to the conclusion that this luminary turns on its own axis in the space of twenty-five and a quarter days, and that its equator has an inclination of seven degrees and a half on the ecliptic. These spots are far from being constant. They undergo, on the contrary, the greatest changes both of form and size. They show themselves particularly in some zones, and appear and disappear at very irregular periods. The maximum and the minimum are reproduced at intervals of about eleven years. One of the most curious discoveries of our times is, that this periodicity of the solar spots has some correspondence with terrestrial magnetism. It is impossible to discover the point at which the two classes of phenomena unite, but the existence of the fact is incontestable. Thus, we have just seen the spots pass through the minimum. From September, 1866, to March, 1867, there were scarcely any of them; and during the same period the magnetic perturbations have been very feeble. As soon as the existence of these spots had been fully ascertained, the questions naturally arose, What is the cause of them, and what their nature? On these points there have been numerous opinions, all as diverse as possible. This is not to be wondered at; for hitherto there has been no correct observation from which could be learned the character and the particulars of the phenomena we desire to explain. So, without stopping to discuss ancient theories, I am about to bring before you the latest observations, and the conclusions at which we have arrived. The drawings of the first observers represent the spots as formed with a black centre surrounded by a gray tint of a uniform figure, which is called penumbra. It is not surprising that, with such imperfect means of observation, the theory of the spots should remain so long uncertain, and that these phenomena should have been taken for simple clouds floating in the solar atmosphere. This theory, which was put forth by Galileo, has been revived in our day. The solar spots have an aspect completely different from that which we see in the ancient cuts. I am going to show the drawing of several of them as observed at the Roman College. I designed them myself, by a very rapid process, such a process being very important for objects essentially variable, and which change their form with great rapidity, and in a short space of time. Here is, first, one of the most common forms. (Figure 1.)

Figure 1.

It is a round spot, consisting of a black centre, around which is a penumbra all ragged. The first thing you wall observe is, that the figure of the penumbra is far from being uniform. It is composed of filaments, very long and very thin, which converge toward the centre. These have been called wisps of straw, willow-leaves, etc. I prefer to call them currents, being aware, at the same time, that it is impossible to compare them to any known thing. They are more scattered near the outline of the penumbra, and they become condensed near the centre, where the light is stronger and brighter. These luminous threads start from the outline of the spot, traverse the penumbra, and often run into the black space that forms the centre, where we see them floating singly, gradually becoming smaller, and disappearing after a while.

The penumbra is not always composed exclusively of threads like those you see. The centre is often surrounded by a uniform pale color, over which the currents are disseminated. These currents are not always continuous, and their different parts present an appearance which may be compared to elongated grains.

In spite of the increased power of the instruments we employ to observe the sun, the detached parts of the spots often appear to us as microscopic objects. In order to form an exact idea of their real dimensions, we must always remember that, at this distance, four fifths of a second is equal to 140 kilometres, and consequently these apparent threads, whose seeming width is at most not more than one or two seconds, are in reality immense currents, being, about the middle, of 600 or 700 kilometres in width, while their length is at least equal to the diameter of the terrestrial globe.

The drawings which you have just seen represent some of these spots in their complete form and exactly defined. But they present themselves oftener under fantastic and irregular forms. They are sometimes accompanied by a kind of tail, itself formed of black spots, and which seems to follow the centre in its motion. We have here a curious example. The centre is not quite black; we meet with shadows there—some gray, and others red; the filaments on all sides fall toward the centre, and their edges are turned back and bent, as if they had experienced some resistance, or as if they had encountered a whirlwind.

Figure 2.

Here is a spot of this kind, (Figure 2,) the details of which are most instructive, and most important in a theoretical point of view. We find the centre divided in several parts by the luminous threads. This appearance was remarked by the ancient astronomers, who explained it by supposing that on the surface of the sun solid crusts were formed, which broke into shivers like glass under a blow from a stone. Modern observations, however, do not admit of this explanation. They show us clearly that these divisions are produced by currents which, leaving opposite edges, meet in the middle of the centre, and thus divide the spot into several parts.

The formation of a spot is never instantaneous. It is ordinarily announced by the appearance of several black points, and by a kind of diminution in the thickness of the luminous bed. These little cavities multiply themselves; one of them develops itself, absorbing the others, and the process ends in the formation of a black spot in the centre. In this first phase the movements of the spots are very irregular, and their advance is always to the front, by reason of the solar rotation.

The drawing which is now before you represents the first appearance of a great spot which was formed almost suddenly on the 30th of July, 1865. The day preceding that of its appearance, in observing the sun as usual, we had remarked only three little cavities, of which we noted the position. On the 30th of July, at mid-day, we found in the place of these cavities an enormous spot, the surface of which was equal to at least ten times the size of our globe. It was so mobile, and its form changed so constantly, that we could scarcely draw it. We could discover in it four principal centres, where the movement of the matter was visible in the form of a whirlwind. In an interval of 24 hours it had undergone some considerable changes. On the 31st of July, the four centres were completely distinct, and the matter which separated them seemed as if it were stretched out. During the days which followed, this form became more and more marked. Soon there were four spots clearly defined, which ultimately assumed the form of four independent craters or cavities. In the interior of these craters we perceived some light shadows, whose form reminded us of that of the clouds we call cirrus. Their color was different from that of the other part of the sun which presented itself to view. As the polariscopic eye-glass does not change the color of objects, we are enabled to see that these clouds are often of a very decided red; and, as this tint is clear and well marked, it is impossible to confound it with the effects due to the achromatism of the instruments. You see here a great number of spots presenting this appearance, and especially in Figure 2, where the red shadows seem intertwined with the white shadows. I have more than once seen these luminous tongues, so to speak, transform themselves into red veils.

This hasty view is, however, so complete as to convince us that the spots cannot be compared to clouds, their aspect not warranting such a comparison. If any part of them may be compared to clouds, it is more the luminous matter; for we see it precipitate itself in the obscure space, and there dissolve in much the same way as we see the vapor which forms the mist dissolve into thin air. All that we are required to believe is, that these apparently black masses are but rents made in the luminous veil which covers the solar body, and to which we give the name of photosphere. It is this bed which transmits light and heat to us. It is suspended in the solar atmosphere, just as clouds in the terrestrial atmosphere. What appear to us as spots in the sun is simply the effect of the rents which take place in it. We are confirmed in this view by the well-ascertained fact that the spots are depressions in the solar body, and that they have the form of a funnel. This form becomes very perceptible, when the spots are drawn by the rotary movement toward the solar disk. When we examine a spot situated toward the centre of the sun, we find that the shape of the penumbra is more regular. But when the spot moves toward the edge, we see the penumbra diminish on the side of the centre, and increase on the opposite side, in which case it presents the appearance of a cavity in the form of a funnel looked at obliquely.

Figure 3.

This effect is very clearly indicated in the drawing (Figure 3) which you have now before you, and for which we are indebted to M. Tacchini, the astronomer, of Palermo. We have observed this same spot at Rome, and we have made a drawing of it similar to that you now see; but I would rather exhibit that of M. Tacchini, because it cannot be objected that it was made under the influence of a preconceived idea. You see that in this spot the edge of the aperture is raised much in the same way as in the craters of the moon, and around these apertures are elevations, clearer and more luminous, which we call faculas.

The conclusions which I have just presented to you are also those to which M. Faye arrived, in studying the apparent perturbations in the movements of the spots. In short, what settles the question definitively is the study of the spots of exceptional grandeur when they reach the edge of the solar disk. It is then very easy to prove that the centre is lower than that part of the outline from which radiates the facule. Both M. Tacchini and I proved this at Rome, in studying the grand spot of July, 1865, at the moment in which it disappeared behind the disk of the sun.

The spots, then, are apertures, rents made in the photosphere. But how is it that these spaces do not fill up immediately? This is a serious difficulty, and it leads us to study the structure of the photosphere. If the photosphere was solid, all the movements which take place in it would be impossible. It is, then, fluid. But, on the other hand, a fluid would naturally spread itself until all points of the surface were on the same level, and it would require very little time to fill a gap having the dimensions of even the largest of the spots. The celebrated William Herschel saw this difficulty, and he met it by a solution which we still adopt, because it has been confirmed by observations and discoveries; so that what to Herschel was but a conjecture has become to us a demonstrated truth. The photospheric matter is like our clouds, gauze-like and transparent as ours. We often see among the clouds differences of level—disruptions which enable us to perceive the blue of the sky in the space which separates them. The same thing happens in the sun; and this hypothesis, which is so useful in explaining the phenomena I have just set before you, accords perfectly with all the particulars observed.

We have seen, in effect, the luminous matter remain suspended and floating in the midst of the centre, and the photospheric currents melt in obscure parts, just as our clouds dissolve, apparently dispersing themselves in a space completely deprived of vapor, when the temperature is sufficiently elevated. The little white veil in Figure 1 is a cloud about to be dissolved. Without this dissolving force, the matter which radiates from the circumference to the centre would not be long in filling up this gap. As I told you just now, we have been able to seize the fact of this dissolution of the solar atmospheric matter, and to see these cloud-like forms change into red veils occupying a large surface in the centre.

One thing alone remains to be proved—the existence of a transparent atmosphere. We have for a long time presumed its presence and its action to explain a well-established fact, namely, that the edges of the sun impart to us less of heat and light than the centre. This fact, inexplicable by any known laws of radiation, is easily explained by the action of an absorbing atmosphere; for the rays part at the edge before passing through a thicker atmospheric stratum, proving necessarily an absorption more considerable than that which flows to the centre. The existence of a solar atmosphere, which was formerly regarded as probable, has been reduced to certainty by the observation of eclipses, and it has been shown that veritable clouds float in this gauze-like bed.

Everybody has heard of the magnificent aureola which surrounds the moon during the total eclipse of the sun. It is a truly solemn moment when, the last rays having just disappeared, we see the shadow of the moon projected on a sky of leaden hue, with a perfectly black disk surrounded by a magnificent luminous glory, like that which we see represented around the heads of the saints. This aureola, at least the part nearest the disk, is owing to the atmosphere of the sun. This spectacle is magnificent, but it becomes much more instructive when we examine it through a good telescope. We then perceive around the disk of the moon gigantic flames, of a lively red, the height of which is incomparably greater than the diameter of the earth. Some are suspended without any support, and others take a horizontal direction, like the smoke that comes out of our chimneys. These flames were designated protuberances; but we knew not how to explain them. It was even doubted whether they were real; and we were quite disposed to attribute them to an optical illusion. These doubts have disappeared since the observations we made in Spain during the eclipse of 1860. On that occasion we were stationed at Desertio de las Palmas, on the coast of the Mediterranean, while M. De la Rue took up his post at Riva Bellosa, at a short distance from the ocean. We succeeded at both these stations in photographing the sun at the period of the total eclipse, and a comparison of the two photographs has proved that the protuberances have a real existence, that they have a form so fixed as to give identical images at two points distant from each other by several hundreds of kilometres. The perfect resemblance of the two photographs is the more remarkable, from their not having been executed at the same moment. Between the two operations an interval of ten minutes elapsed. These protuberances, considering their distance and their bent forms, can be nothing but clouds suspended in the solar atmosphere, and it is these which form the red veils that we have seen in the centre. The observation of eclipses proves to us conclusively that the sun is really surrounded by a stratum of this red matter, which we ordinarily see only on the most elevated summits.

In the photograph taken at Desertio de las Palmas during the total eclipse, the exterior form of the atmosphere is perfectly visible. We see that it is more extended at the equator than at the polar regions, which is a natural effect arising from the movement of rotation which the sun possesses. We see, in short, that this atmosphere is livelier in its action in the two zones on each side of the equator, in which the spots ordinarily show themselves. The existence of a solar atmosphere being perfectly in accordance with all known principles and with all ascertained facts, there is no longer any room for calling it in question. We describe the sun, then, as surrounded by a dense atmosphere in which floats the photospheric matter. The surface of the photosphere is far from being uniform and regular. It is, on the contrary, wrinkled all over, and again covered with granulations. These granulations, first perceived by Herschel, have been carefully studied in later times.

When our atmosphere is calm and the observation very precise, the whole bottom of the solar disk appears covered with small luminous grains, separated by a very fine and very dark net-work, resembling in appearance partially desiccated milk, examined through a microscope. These points, or white grains, are of different sizes. Where there are openings, we see around each of them some lines of grains in the form of leaves, more or less oval. Their mean dimension is about the third of a second. These grains are only the upper part of the flame which inclines toward the openings, thus proving that there is a very sensible power of attraction in the apertures. We may even say that these granulations resemble the appearance which the clouds known as cumuli present when, from the summit of a mountain, their upper part is examined. The largest spots would be, then, but an exaggeration of this net-work, ordinarily so fine, produced by the force which caused the flame, or rather, the stratum of the cumulus.

But what is it that produces these spots in the sun? Here the difficulty is singularly complicated. To reply satisfactorily to this question, it would be necessary to become acquainted with what passes in the interior of the solar globe. But let us, without hesitation, and without attempting to delude ourselves, confess that our study of the sun is confined to its external stratum, and to the most striking phenomena of which it is the seat; whereas, with regard to the interior mass, it is only by the process of induction that we are enabled to arrive at any knowledge.

Observations which we have just made lead us to the conclusion that the spots are owing to emanations issuing from the solar body, almost similar to the way in which matter is ejected by our volcanoes. This is proved both by the form of the craters, which you have just seen, and by the columns of clouds, analogous to those arising out of volcanoes, or out of chimneys, observed during eclipses. Here, then, is how we explain the constitution of the photosphere and the formation of the spots. The exterior stratum cools itself constantly by radiation, passes into the gauze-like state, or state of vapor, and ends by precipitating itself in the liquid state, or even in the solid, remaining, however, suspended in the solar atmosphere, as clouds do in ours. It is this condensed matter that forms the photosphere, and it is from that principally we receive light and heat. From some cause or other, a movement from below takes place in the gauze-like mass which is situated underneath. By this movement the photospheric stratum, raised at first, spreads itself on all sides, forming a sort of cushion, and ends by separating itself, leaving a wide opening in the form of a crater. While the volcanic emission lasts, the spot remains open, and it disappears only at the moment when the equilibrium is reestablished, by the luminous matter filling up the void which was formed. If this theory is correct, the circumference of the spots ought to form the mountains above the exterior surface. Now, we have just seen that the outline of the spots is always surrounded by faculae, which constitute prominent elevations. Supposing it is true that the interior mass is the seat of violent action, this conclusion has nothing surprising in it, and we are led to it by a certain number of other phenomena equally remarkable. Thus, every time that a spot is produced, we remark that it is visibly projected with a quickness greater than that of the solar rotation. The projecting mass is then animated with a quickness greater than the surface of the photosphere; and, in order to explain this fact, we must admit that the matter of the interior stratum possesses a quickness greater than the superficial part.

This novel conclusion is supported by another fact. We know now that the rotation of the spots has not the same angular quickness under all the parallels. The quickness is sensibly greater in the equatorial zone than in the higher latitudes. This circumstance forces us to the conclusion that the sun is not a solid globe, but that its structure admits of the different strata of which it is formed having a movement of rotation independent of each other as regards velocity. In fact, the only explanation we can give of this difference of quickness is, that the interior mass is fluid, and that it is moved by a rotary process, more rapid than that of the external surface. We cannot, however, undertake the formal demonstration of this point on the present occasion.

This fluidity of the sun is calculated to surprise you; but you will cease to regard it as incredible when I remind you of certain ascertained facts about this luminary. The gravity of its surface is twenty-eight times greater than that of the surface of our globe, from which results an enormous pressure capable of condensing a large number of substances, or, at least, of singularly diminishing their volume. Looking simply at this fact, the mean density of the sun ought to be much greater than that of the earth. It is nothing of the kind, however, but just the contrary; for the specific gravity of the terrestrial globe is four times greater than that of the solar mass. We must admit the existence of a repulsive force capable of overcoming the molecular attraction, and of rarefying the substances which the weight tends to condense. This repulsive force is probably owing to the heat, and, in fact, the temperature of the sun is estimated at not less than five millions of degrees. At this temperature no matter could remain solid, even in spite of the enormous pressure of which we have already spoken. It is, then, impossible for us to admit the existence of a solid mass, and much more that of a cold centre in the interior of the sun.

And here an objection presents itself to which I ought to reply. If the interior mass of the sun is at a temperature so very elevated, how is it that, when the photosphere opens, a black spot is presented to our eyes? In examining this opening, we perceive a substance of which the temperature is extremely elevated, and which ought, consequently, to be very luminous. How is it, then, that, on the contrary, it presents to us the appearance of a very deep black? My reply is, that the black color of the spots is a purely relative matter; that it is owing to the contrast of the brilliant light which comes to us from the photosphere. If we could see those apparently dark parts away from the glittering mass of the sun, they would appear not only luminous, but dazzling with light.

But you will say to me, it still remains true that the interior mass of the sun is less luminous than the photosphere; but since the superficial part constantly cools by radiation, it follows that there ought to be less heat, and, consequently, less brilliancy in the photosphere than in the interior mass. With your permission, I will make a reply to this which might, at the first blush, appear paradoxical, but which is, nevertheless, the expression of truth. It is precisely because it is of so very high a temperature that the interior mass of the sun sends us a less degree of light and heat; it is precisely because it is cooled at the point of condensation, to precipitate itself in the liquid or solid state, that the photospheric matter becomes hotter and more luminous. To make this plain, we have only to recall certain well-known principles of physics. Two bodies equally hot may not emit the same quantity of heat. One of them may cool itself rapidly in heating the bodies which surround it; while the other may let its heat escape only very slowly, and heat but feebly the neighboring bodies. In this case, we say that the first has a more considerable radiating power. Now, philosophers know that gas has a very feeble radiating power, and that it may be consequently at a very high temperature without emitting around it a great quantity of light and heat. You have an illustration now before your eyes. This lamp, fed by lighted gas, gives a very brilliant flame, because the carbon remains there some time in suspension before burning. Let us throw into the flame a little oxygen; immediately the flame pales, becomes bluish, and ceases to be luminous. Its temperature, notwithstanding, has greatly increased, and it is now the celebrated gas by the aid of which M. Sainte-Claire Deville melts his platina so rapidly. The change results from the very rapid combustion of the carbon by the oxygen. As soon as this takes place, the flame, no longer containing any solid body, loses almost all power of emission, and ceases, in spite of its high temperature, to have the brilliancy which it possessed at a lower temperature. To convince you perfectly, let us put a solid body in this flame, now so pale, and you will see it become more brilliant than ever. We introduce, for example, a piece of lime, and the apartment is at once illuminated by the Drummond light, one of the most brilliant of our artificial lights.

But, leaving the earth, let us now return to the sun. The interior mass is undoubtedly at a very high temperature—so high, indeed, that all the substances composing it must be in the state of gas, possessing only a feeble radiating power; while the photosphere is composed of matter precipitated in a liquid or solid state, of which the radiating power must be considerable. Here is the explanation of what seemed paradoxical in my answer. The hottest part of the sun is not the part which warms and lights us most, because, being in the state of gas, it produces only a feeble radiation.

Two questions now present themselves. How is it that the sun preserves indefinitely so elevated a temperature in spite of the enormous amount of heat which it loses daily? Of what kind of matter is this luminary composed? And what the nature of the radiation which sends to us daily the light and heat which we need? It is undoubtedly impossible to give a complete and satisfactory answer to these questions. We may yet be able, however, to do so; and we are persuaded that science in its progress will only confirm and develop the explanations which we give to-day of first principles. In the first place, it is impossible to admit that the sun is simply a luminous globe, not possessing any means of renewing the heat which it loses at every moment; for, in that case, at the end of a few years its temperature would be lowered in a very appreciable manner; and it would not require an age to effect a complete change in the phenomena which are dependent on it. There must be, then, a source of heat in the sun.

We are in the habit of comparing things we do not know with those with which we are familiar. Thus we have been led to think of the solar globe as the seat of a combustion similar to that we witness on our hearths. This idea is deceptive.

We know the quantity of heat which each substance throws off in a state of combustion; we know, too, what a vast body the sun is; and we are able to calculate with a rough but sufficient approximation the quantity of heat which the body of the sun would produce in burning. The result of this calculation is, that, at the elevated temperature which the sun possesses, the combustion of the solar mass could not be kept up during many ages. Since the historic period this temperature would have been so lowered as to produce a change in the seasons that has not taken place. We are compelled, then, to abandon the idea of a mass in combustion, as well as that of a luminous globe, and to acknowledge that there is a secret which has escaped us.

This secret, gentlemen, chemistry is charged to unveil to us. Astronomers profit eagerly by all the discoveries which physical science makes, and it is by this means alone that they arrive first at conjecture, and afterward at a knowledge of what is taking place at prodigious distances. It is thus that the phenomenon of dissociation recently discovered by M. Sainte-Claire Deville, puts us in the way of explaining the permanence of the solar temperature. We know that no combination can resist heat. Whatever may be the stability of the combination, whatever energy the affinitive force may possess, if the temperature is raised to the proper degree, the elements separate, and remain together simply in a mixed state, wanting to combine anew when the temperature is lowered. This is what we call dissociation; and this is just the state, for example, in which we find oxygen and hydrogen gas, exposed to a temperature of 2500 degrees. At such a temperature they remain in a mixed state, without being able to form water, which ought to result from the combination of these two elements. But the phenomenon of dissociation cannot take place without the intervention of an enormous amount of heat. To illustrate this, let us suppose a kilogram of ice at zero. In liquefying it would absorb 79 degrees of heat; to make it warm, 100 degrees would be required; in evaporation it would absorb 640; and to dissociate it, 3955, or nearly 4000 degrees would be necessary. What we say of water is equally true of all the combinations; all that is required being to change the numerical degrees of the latent heat, for fusion, for volatilization, and for dissociation. This being so, we arrive at the conclusion that even the least considerable quantity of matter in a state of dissociation may be regarded as a magazine of latent heat continually tending toward sensible development.

The temperature of dissociation of water is almost 2500 degrees. The temperature of the sun being at least five millions of degrees, the whole mass of which it is composed ought to be in a state of dissociation, and to contain consequently an enormous quantity of latent heat independent of the sensible heat; to which is owing this prodigiously elevated temperature. What, then, is the effect which the solar matter ought to produce on the radiation of which it is the seat? Almost the same effect that radiation produces on a liquid body which has reached a temperature of solidification. The heat necessary to keep up the radiation is borrowed from that part of the liquid which solidifies, so that the temperature, instead of decreasing, remains constantly at the point at which solidification ceases. This is really what passes on the surface of the sun. This brilliant mass, raised to a temperature of five millions of degrees, has a tendency to cool itself rapidly. The radiation produces, in fact, a coolness in the superficial stratum. By reason of this coolness, part of the gas which composes the atmosphere is lowered below the temperature of dissociation; it yields then an enormous quantity of heat, which from latent becomes sensible, and prevents also an ulterior lowering of temperature. It is sufficient to repair the continual loss of heat that a mass of several kilograms passes daily from a state of dissociation to one of combination; and it is evident, considering the enormous size of the solar globe, that things may remain in this state during millions of ages without the temperature of the sun changing in a manner which may be felt by us. I say, by us, for our knowledge of this temperature is obtained at no less a distance than several hundred thousands of degrees.

It appears, then, from the very nature of the sun, that it does not possess an inexhaustible quantity of latent heat. A day will come when it will no more be able to lose heat without being cooled in a sensible manner, but that cooling will not take place before a very distant period, and long after we have disappeared from this world.

By way of recapitulation of the several views we have set forth, let us endeavor to give you a precise idea of the sun, as regards both its interior and its surface. The reasonings which we have just advanced, founded partly on astronomical observations and partly on known principles of science, lead us to regard the sun as composed of a fluid or gauze-like mass, surrounded with a photospheric stratum, the matter of which has passed through the first stage of condensation. According to the views held by Laplace, the sun proceeded from the hands of its creator in a nebulous state. We are led to believe that the interior mass is still in this state. A change has taken place only on the surface, because there only could the loss of heat owing to radiation produce a partial cooling. The result of this cooling is the condensation of a relatively small quantity of matter, which, possessing a very considerable power of emission, forms the photosphere. It is in the presence of this photosphere that the only difference exists between the sun and a nebula, between the myriads of stars which people the heavens, and the nebulae with whose existence the telescope makes us acquainted.

We come, at length, to the last with which we proposed to deal: What is the constituent matter of the sun? What are the elements which enter into the composition of its atmosphere and of the photospheric bed? Some years ago, to put a question like this would have been regarded as rashness; to attempt to answer it, the height of folly. We only knew, from the analysis of meteoric stones, that cosmical matter did not contain any other elements besides those of which our globe is composed. But to-day we can go further, thanks to the discoveries of the German Kirchoff.

We all know the solar phantom, and the brilliant colors which result from the decomposition of the white light. This phantom seems continuous if we make the observations in a rough manner; but if we employ delicate means, we see that it is formed of a multitude of black streaks and of brilliant rays perfectly distinct from each other. It is impossible to imitate this appearance artificially. All that we are able to do is to project on a screen the figure of a solar appearance taken from a drawing. You see that it is furrowed over with a considerable number of black streaks, of which the principal ones are, according to Fraunhofer, who discovered them, indicated by the letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, etc. These streaks are extremely numerous: we have counted no fewer than 45,000 of them.

I have said that it is impossible for us to imitate this appearance with our artificial lights, and it is precisely here that we are able to discern the nature of the different sources of light. In fact, each source has an appearance peculiar to itself, and by which it is characterized. The brilliant line of the Drummond light gives a continuous appearance, and it is the same with all the simple incandescents. But when we analyze the light of a body in combustion, we arrive at an entirely different result. The appearance obtained in this case is crossed by rays which, instead of being black, are, on the contrary, more brilliant than the colors in the midst of which they are formed. The same thing happens when we make the rays emanating from the electric light pass through a prism, because in this case there is combustion, that is to say, a combination of the oxygen in charcoals, mixed with foreign matter, from which is produced the voltaic bow. If we are content to restore these burning coals, they will give a continuous appearance just as lime.

The brilliant spectral rays are not always the same. They depend on the nature of the metal which is found in the flame, and which takes part in the combustion. You see at this moment the appearance which silver presents: it is characterized by a magnificent green ray. Here is now the appearance of copper, which, we know, has a yellow ray, accompanied by a fine group of green rays, different from those which silver produces. We now burn some zinc, which gives a magnificent group of blue rays, a fine red ray, and another of violet. Finally, we shall close these experiments with burning brass, which is, as you are aware, a mixture of copper and zinc. You will recognize in the appearance which is produced the characteristic rays of those metals, each of them producing its proper effect, as if it were alone.

We learn but little, however, from these experiments, of the nature of the substances of which the sun is composed; for the rays which we have produced are all brilliant, while those of the solar appearance are black. Let us see, then, in pursuing this subject, if it would not be possible for us to obtain these black lines with our artificial lights. Let us produce, in analyzing the Drummond light, a perfectly continuous appearance. Now, let us make this appearance, before reaching the screen, pass through a deep layer of hypoazotic acid. Immediately you see it discontinued. It is like the solar appearance, crossed over by a multitude of black lines. The hypoazotic acid is not the only gas that produces this result. The vapor from brome, that of iodine, will give equally the black lines in the same circumstances, only these lines are different from those we have just seen in the experiment made with the hypoazotic acid. Thus, the gases, the vapors, possessing the property of absorbing certain luminous rays, certain colors, these rays, found no longer in the appearance, are necessarily replaced by the black lines we have just observed. All the gases, all the vapors, could not, I am convinced, produce this result; for it is clear that their power of absorption, being less considerable, could not make itself felt, unless by means of a stratum the thickness of which should be greater than that which we are able to use in our experiments. We find a proof of this in what passes in the atmospheric air. Under a feeble thickness no sensible absorption is produced; but it is certain that the atmospheric mass absorbs a great number of rays, and consequently gives birth to many black lines; for in the solar appearance we observe new and very marked lines, when the sun being near the horizon, his rays pass through a bed of air of very considerable thickness. These rays are principally owing to the vapor of water. We can equally affirm the absorbent power of the atmosphere which surrounds the planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. Their appearances contain lines very different from the solar appearance. Yet, as the light which they transmit to us comes to them from the sun, we are forced to conclude that that light undergoes some modification in travelling over its transparent path. It is the atmosphere of the planets which produces this result.

The sun also possesses an atmosphere, as we have seen, and this atmosphere ought necessarily to exercise an influence on the rays which traverse it. Such is, in fact, the origin of the rays which we notice in the solar appearance. They are owing to the atmospheric absorption, and the bed of transparent but absorbent vapor which surrounds the atmosphere, and which the rays pass through before they spread themselves in space.

But how are we to ascertain the nature of the vapors which produce the black lines we observe? Here physical science comes again to our aid, and the question we have just put finds its answer in a recent discovery. We have seen that a certain substance in burning gives birth to certain luminous rays which characterize it. We have also seen that this same substance, in a state of vapor, absorbs, on the contrary, certain rays, and produces in consequence certain black lines which are equally characteristic. Now, by a singular coincidence, these two powers, emissive and absorbent, are identically the same. Each substance, in a state of vapor, absorbs precisely the rays which it is capable of producing in combustion, so that the black streaks produced in the first case occupy identically the same place as the brilliant lines observed in the second. We may demonstrate this interesting theory by the following experiment, due to M. Toucault. We know that sodium produces in burning a beautiful yellow light. Well, let us burn some sodium in the coals, and between these two substances the electric light is produced. The metal while it is burning volatilizes largely; the vapors which are produced absorb precisely the rays which they should have emitted in their combustion; and you see that in the yellow, instead of a brilliant line, we have a very dark line. What we have just seen take place with the sodium has been equally proved by experiments on a great number of metals, and, by induction, we may extend the application to all those on which it has been impossible to make experiments.

Let us apply this principle to what concerns the light of the sun. The photosphere is composed of condensed substances, precipitated in a solid or a liquid state, floating in a transparent and absorbent atmosphere. This matter, being simply incandescent, ought to present to us a continuous appearance, and this continuity can be disturbed only by the absorption of the solar atmosphere. From this it follows, that to ascertain the chemical nature of the substances which compose this atmosphere, it will be sufficient to compare the black lines of the sun with the bright lines of our artificial lights. This has been done. M. Kirchoff first discovered that the sun contains sodium; for the line D of Fraunhofer coincides perfectly with the brilliant lines of this metal. It is equally well known that iron, copper, and twenty other substances which exist upon the earth in a solid state, would, at a temperature of five millions of degrees, be necessarily in a state of vapor.

After having thus made a chemical analysis of the sun, astronomers wish to go further; they have sought to know equally the composition of the stars. We have been led by this to some very remarkable consequences; we have been able to make a kind of classification of these stars, and to determine the group to which our sun belongs. It remains, then, for us now to apply the spectral analysis to the myriads of stars which stud the heavens, to those far distant suns, the greater part of which, perhaps, surpass in grandeur and brightness that which is the centre of our planetary system. It remains for us to interrogate these scarcely perceptible bodies, sparkling at such an incalculable distance, and to demand and draw from them the secret of their chemical composition. This enterprise is daring, but it is not rash. The difficulties are alarming; yet learned men are not discouraged, for they are accustomed to see difficulties disappear before strenuous and persevering labor.

We commenced our study of the stars with the complicated instruments which we employ for the sun; but we soon found out that this complication was useless. We have been able to reduce our instruments to the number of two, a cylindrical glass and a prism. And M. Wolff, of the Paris Observatory, has succeeded recently in suppressing the cylinder, keeping only the essential element, that is, the prism intended to produce the appearance.

We have examined a great number of stars, and I am going to submit to you some of the results at which we have arrived. You see at this moment the appearance which the star Orion presents. This star is of a yellow color; the appearance which it produces is deeply streaked; and it is one of the most beautiful in the heavens. You will find there the line D of sodium, and the line b of magnesium. These are two fundamental lines which have served as marked points to compare this appearance with that of the sun. Besides sodium and magnesium, a of Orion contains iron, copper, and several other known metals; but it is singular that hydrogen is not found there in the free state, as in the sun. There is, then, some essential difference between the stars, of which you will be more convinced as we go further into the subject. Here is the appearance of Sirius. You see it is not nearly so fine. You will find two large bands in blue, in the place of the streak F of the sun; two others in violet; and one, very faint, in yellow. The two first are attributable to hydrogen, and the last to sodium; but we know not to what substance the violet is owing. In the green there are also some very fine lines, but very difficult to seize.

What is most remarkable is, that all the white stars present the same appearances, and half the stars that are visible belong to this type. Thus the fine stars of the Lyre, of the Eagle, of the Bear, Castor, etc., ought to be ranged by the side of Sirius. There is, however, an exception in [zeta] of the Bear, which is a yellow star. The magnificent stars of Arcturus, of the Goat, of Procyon, belong, on the contrary, to the class of which our sun is a type, except that the iron line E is much more marked. Their color, of light yellow, led to the inference that they were analogous to the sun, and the supposition has been confirmed by spectral analysis. All know substances have an appearance which is peculiar to them, and which characterizes them. Can we say as much of the stars? Do they also present marked differences in their appearance? This has been the subject of very interesting researches. The task has been undertaken at the observatory of the Roman College, and it has led to a result altogether unforeseen, namely, that the stellar appearances appertain to only a very limited number of types. We may classify them in three groups. The first group is that of the white stars like Sirius; the second, that of the yellow stars, of which Arcturus and the second are members; and Orion may be regarded as a type of the third, in which we ought to place a of Hercules, and [Beta] of Pegasus. These two last-named stars have very remarkable appearances. They seem formed of a multitude of channels, which are divided by large black bands. This form of appearance shows us that the stars which belong to this type are surrounded with atmospheres heavily charged with vapor. In this group enters all the red stars, and in particular Omicron of the Whale, that celebrated star which has been called The Wonderful. Several small stars of a blood-red color have appearances resembling each other. It is remarkable that in all the appearances belonging to stars of this type, the black lines occupy the same place, which proves that in general they are all made alike.

I have observed further that certain types abound in certain parts of the heavens, and that the stars of the same kind are generally grouped together. Thus the white stars are found in the Pleiades, the Bear, the Lyre, etc.; the yellow in the Whale, Eridan, etc. The constellation of Orion deserves particular attention; it abounds in stars of a green color, reminding us of the nebula which is found in the same region of the sky. This small number of types, and the grouping of which I have spoken, constitute an unforeseen fact, the importance of which is considerable from a cosmological point of view. We should not, however, be hasty in drawing conclusions from it.

A curious fact has been established with regard to one of the white stars in Cassiopeia. Its appearance is directly the opposite of that which is presented by stars of the same color, for, in place of black lines, it shows some brilliant lines. This phenomenon has appeared to me so extraordinary, that I am anxious whether it is an isolated fact. I have observed more than five hundred stars, selecting some of the largest, and I have found only one, [Beta] of the Lyre, which possesses the same peculiarity. M. Wolff says that among the small stars of the Swan he has found some examples of the same kind. A most remarkable fact is, that these brilliant lines were found in a transient star which glittered for a time in the Crown in May, 1866.

These observations upset the theories which had been prematurely built upon facts formerly known. Still, there is nothing inexplicable here. You have seen that sodium burning gives a line of a very lively yellow, while the line becomes black if the sodium is increased to a considerable quantity. Might not the same thing happen with the hydrogen, which produces the brilliant lines of which I have spoken to you? Might not a small quantity act by radiation, while the action would be one of absorption should the mass be greater?

After having examined the stars, it was impossible to resist the temptation of observing the nebulae. You know that we designate by this name the kind of white clouds which are found spread in the heavens, and of which the nature is not perfectly known. Herschel has assured us that many of them, by means of the telescope, may be resolved into a multitude of small stars approaching very closely to each other. We infer from this that the greater part are composed in the same manner, and that the feebleness of our instruments is the only thing that prevents us from proving it. It is, however, admitted that many of these nebulae are formed of cosmical matter in a state of vapor not condensed. Everybody knows the nebulae which compose the Milky Way. But besides those which are visible to the naked eye, there is a vast number whose existence the telescope has revealed to us. One, of the most celebrated is that which is found in the magnificent constellation of Orion: we have carefully drawn it at the Roman College, and you see at this moment a sketch of it on the screen. The nebulae possess a very feeble light, and we had our doubts of success in seeking to apply the spectral analysis to them. We have, however, succeeded beyond our hopes. The appearances obtained in these observations are very singular. They reduce themselves constantly to luminous streaks, all the other colors failing; it is, in another way, that which happens when we burn an alcoholic solution with marine salt; the flame, analyzed by the spectroscope, gives simply a yellow streak. In the nebulae we find two green lines and a blue one. Such is the result which we obtained in examining the large nebulae of Orion, and that of the Milky Way in Sagittarius. Such is that, also, which furnishes the little nebulae called planetaries, on account of their form, which resembles that of the planets. These facts have been established for the first time by M. Huggins.

As I have just told you, the nebulas present generally but three lines; one belongs to azote, another to hydrogen, and the third is unknown. This result, which was not known before, is of the highest importance; for it teaches us that the nebulae are composed of gas and of vapors far removed from their point of saturation and condensation. These appearances, with luminous lines, distinctly isolated and separated from one another, appertain essentially to gas, and, we ought to add, to gas raised to a very high temperature. Thus we have made a discovery by the aid of the prism, for which the most powerful glasses had failed us.

The nebulae, notwithstanding their shining points, are not in general a collection of stars, but masses of cosmical matter in a state of dissociation under the action of an extremely elevated temperature. The collections of stars are perfectly distinguishable by the continuity of their appearances, as we see in the nebulae of Andromeda, and in some others which are well known. The discovery opens a vast field of investigation, and will be an epoch in science.

We have wandered far into the depths of space, very far from the point from which we started. This is of no consequence, however, for between the sun, the stars, and the nebulae there is a close relation. The sun is simply a star approaching nearer to us than others. According to a bold hypothesis, its entire mass was at one period in a state of dissociation, which a great part of it still actually preserves. The only thing that makes it differ from the nebulae, and causes us to rank it among the stars, is its superficial stratum of inconsiderable thickness.

What mysteries do we not discover in nature, when we investigate it by the aid of those principles and instruments with which modern science has furnished us! And in the presence of the wonders, what an exalted idea ought we to form of the splendors of the universe and the power of its Creator!

Permit me, gentlemen, in closing this lecture, to quote an admirable thought of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. The sun, says that father, is the most perfect image of the Deity. You see the effects which it produces; you enjoy its benefits; but you cannot contemplate it directly, nor sound its depths. The loss of life, the greatest of the earthly blessings we enjoy, would be the punishment of the madman who would dare to invade its mysteries. It is the same with the Deity; it is impossible for us to see in himself; and we ought to content ourselves with admiring here below those traces of his infinite perfections which shine in his works.

We have succeeded, by the means with which science has furnished us, in examining this dazzling star, and in doing so we have seen some unexpected wonders; but how many other wonders have escaped us, which will doubtless be discovered at some future time!

If we can thus speak of the material sun and its splendors, what shall we not say of its prototype, when, freed from this material covering of sense, and reduced to a state of pure intelligence, we contemplate him with the eyes of our soul? Science and Faith are two rays issuing from the same focus, the one direct, the other reflected. As long as we are upon this earth we should be content with the second, our vision not being strong enough to support the brightness of the first. But a day will come when we shall see the Divinity face to face; and, in the meantime, the man who denies his unfathomable mysteries, under the pretence that our feeble powers are not equal to their comprehension, is as foolish as the rude peasant who should deny the wonders with which I have entertained you, under the pretext that his eyes are dazzled by the light of the sun. A day will come when the direct rays of the Science of Divinity will no longer dazzle our intelligence: the high destinies which awaits humanity will permit of our contemplating the unclouded essence of the Deity, as the reward of the persevering but not blind fidelity with which we shall have here below, without pride as without baseness, believed in his existence and admired his greatness.

Translated From The French.
An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 155]

[Footnote 155: Rosa Ferrucci: her Life, her Letters, and her Death. By the Abbé H. Perreyve.]

Continued From Page 372.

I here interrupt, for a moment, the order of these Letters, to introduce a fragment from one of the writings of Signorina Ferrucci, in which is found, eloquently developed, the idea with which the last letter closes. Need we wonder that, to so a pure a soul, Christianity was all mercy and all love? Certainly not. The passions of men have so often disfigured the sweet countenance of the gospel that those outside the household of faith form a false idea of it, and, in their inability to distinguish what is divine from what is human, they reject all. But, if they would only learn to leave men and draw near to God, to flee vain disputes and go to the centre where all is calm, they would soon know that the genius of Christianity is indeed love. Pure souls, whom anger and dispute have not marred, know this well. The young author whom I am about to cite understood it, and it is with a feeling of respect that I transcribe these beautiful pages, which breathe so strong a perfume of the gospel:

The love of God, which inflames the heart of man and infuses into it a holy zeal, has assuredly nothing in common with that implacable fanaticism with which infidelity so unjustly charges the religion of Jesus Christ. And yet it is but too true that the sons of one Heavenly Father, the inhabitants of a world watered by the Redeemer's blood, have more than once, while waging cruel war upon each other, ranged themselves under the standard of the cross. But because such horrors darken the page of history, are we to conclude that the love of God banishes all toleration from the human heart, or can we deny that the Catholic religion is all love? And shall the blind fury of men make the world forget the numberless benefits which, for nineteen centuries, the gospel has bestowed upon all nations and upon its most cruel enemies?

O church of the Redeemer! who dost pray for thine enemies, and dost show thyself ever ready to succor them, even as our Heavenly Father maketh his sun to shine upon the most ungrateful of mankind, who was it that filled thy heart with that holy and ever active love of all the virtues? Who gave thee the strength to oppose at all times a tranquil front to the masters of the world? Whence have thy martyrs derived that courage which made them joyfully bend their heads under the axe of the executioner? Who taught thee to confound the subtle contradictions of the philosophers, and, with the same hands, to break the chains of the slave? How is it that, ever firm and immovable, thou alone hast survived the vicissitudes of all things and the overthrow of so many thrones? Who has given thee such power of persuasion that by its prodigies "from the very stones are raised up children to Abraham"? In fine, whence hast thou received that inviolable authority which resolves all doubts, dissipates our errors, humbles the mighty, sustains the weak, enlightens the world, pardons all faults, and consoles in every affliction and in every distress?

Ah! who does not see that so many miracles have been wrought by the sole power of that divine love kindled in thee by Jesus Christ? For just as thou lovest Jesus in fatigue and in repose, in tears and in joy, in persecution and in peace, in combat and in victory, so also thou lovest in him and for him the humble and the great, the faithful and the unbelieving, the poor and the rich. There is not on this earth a human being for whom thou dost not pray, and whom thou wouldst not, at any price, bring back to the bosom of him who suffered for all men because he loved all. Oh! may thy desires soon be fulfilled, holy church of the living God!

How, then, can that man call himself the friend of God and the true son of the church of Jesus Christ, who would oppose arms to arms, violence to violence, forgetting these words of Christ, "Love your enemies," "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"? The blind apostles of intolerance show well that they have never penetrated in its true sense the life of the Redeemer, who, suffering every injury, and even the death of the cross, drew the whole world to himself by the irresistible power of pardon and of love. He who would be willing to forget his prejudices, and, retiring into the solitude of his own heart, would plant there the sweet image of Jesus Christ, such a one would soon learn how far the power of Christian meekness transcends that of the sword, and he would shudder at the thought of pursuing with fire and steel them whom the cross alone may vanquish. Ah! if Jesus crucified entered truly into our hearts, how many things would he not make them understand! [Footnote 156]

[Footnote 156: Della Carità Cristiani.]

Again, I find, in the same paper, this beautiful sentiment:

I believe that charity consists not solely in compassionating the sufferings of the poor and relieving them. Its character is more general: it must be the soul of all our sentiments. For my part, I see charity in patience, in humility, in faith, in docile submission to superiors, in justice, in courage, in fortitude, in contempt of the world, in the desire of heaven. Charity is, indeed, the light of God, infinite as himself. Whoever has received into his heart a ray of this divine light is bound, if I may so speak, to communicate its warmth to the whole world.

We return to the letters.

July 15.

Sweet were the impressions, Gaetano, which our walk yesterday in that beautiful garden left on my mind. Is it not true that the flowers, the trees, the blue sky, the pure soft air, the song of the birds, the hum of the insects—all conspired to speak to our hearts of God? I feel, too, that all these beautiful things seemed more joyous to me because you were there, for to me they all seemed to reflect the feelings of your heart. Then those beautiful verses of my mother's which Uncle G—— read to us affected me powerfully. Earth and heaven, flowers and songs, all borrowed a new charm from the harmony of those beautiful stanzas.

July 22.

I do not know the places you speak of, unless you mean Romito and Antignano. I went as far as La Torre on foot, one beautiful August morning, without suffering much from the heat, which was tempered by the sea-breeze. After having traversed that long, steep road, which becomes at every step more solitary and more closely shut in between the hills and the sea, I went up to the top of the little fortress, and thence for a long time I gazed on the neighboring islands and the vast horizon where sea and sky seemed to unite, and I even discerned some of the lands of the Maremma. Another time, with the Plezza, the Gabrini, and other friends, we went as far as Romito. The sun had already sunk below the horizon. Every moment the last glimmering of twilight was becoming more faint, and soon the moon rose behind the hills. Her pale rays were reflected in the sea, where nothing was seen save a solitary fishing-boat; and the gentle murmur of the waves, as they came slowly to die on the rocky shore, was the only sound that broke the stillness of the night. We crossed from time to time the dry bed of one of those torrents which fall from the mountains into the sea; and thus, now talking, now silent, gazing, admiring, we passed the two little towers, and, arrived at the limits of the two communes, we stopped and turned back, as if we had reached the Columns of Hercules, There is a comparison that would please my good friend Louisa V——. Would you believe it, in her last letter she gravely compares me to a navigator steering toward a new world. "Yet no," she says, "love is a world as old as the earth." That may be, my good Louisa; but to me it is new, all new, Gaetano, and I believe, even, that it will never grow old, like everything that comes directly from God, who is endless duration in eternal youth! On this is grounded my sure hope that, after having united us here on earth, he will unite us again in the life to come; and this thought alone raises me from earth to heaven!

This was not the first time that Rosa had visited Antignano. That calm and lovely shore had witnessed the sports of her childhood. Three or four years before the date of the last letter we have given, she wrote from that place to one of her young friends the following pretty letter:

Antignano, July, 1853.

In spite of our joy at being here, believe me, my dear Maria, we feel your absence sadly. It turns to melancholy the joyous memories of last year. This is from my heart, Maria; how happy I should be to have you at this moment by my side! Come back to us then, dear friend, come back! The little wood where we spent so many happy hours, the great shady trees, the smiling country, and the sea—all call you back. Why, it is but two days since I heard a wave which came bounding over the sea say to you, "Come down, young girl, from the flowery bank into this calm sea, and yield to the invitation of the sun, who with his brilliant rays is brightening air and earth and water." But this pretty song of the naiad was suddenly interrupted, for my poor wave broke and expired on a rock. All its sister wavelets murmured the same prayer to you, but all, like the first, soon broke upon the shore; and I grew pensive at the sight, for those poor waves, vanishing so quickly, seemed to me a true image of our shattered hopes, which cause us so many tears. Meanwhile a little interior voice remained with me, and murmured sweetly in my ear, "Courage, courage! Why are you sad? Cannot Maria come back? I am your good friend Hope, listen to me and believe me: I promise you that next year Maria shall be here." This consoled me a little, for I always believe what my good friend Hope tells me. Courage, then, and patience, and I am sure of having you yet at Antignano. Dear Maria, pardon this letter, which is as long as it is foolish, and, if you do not understand it, seek in it only a new proof of my tender affection for you. Meanwhile, let us leave the world of dreams and enter that of news. ...

To Gaetano.

July 28.

This day brings to us a mournful anniversary. Poor Charles Albert! on this day, and at the very hour in which I write, he yielded up to God his soul, oppressed with grief, but still full of an unshaken confidence in the justice of his cause and the imprescriptibility of his rights. Doubtless the saints have welcomed into heaven him who on earth loved God and suffered for justice' sake. It is with feelings of compassion that I think of the king, his son, surviving all his family, who have, one after the other, gone before him to the grave.

This enthusiastic remembrance of the house of Savoy is not the only one to be found in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci. The misfortunes of the king, Charles Albert; the death of the Duke of Genoa, his son; the ruin of so many hopes, for a moment triumphant—all these often call forth in her correspondence plaints and regrets. I like to see this love of national independence in so pure a soul. She says somewhere:

"In considering the history of nations, we discover at every step new and infallible proofs of the wisdom and omnipotence of him who directs the affairs of the world; of that mysterious justice which surpasses all human understanding as the heavens surpass the earth. Hope, then, in the Lord, ye victims of oppression! Acknowledge the hand which alone can give you deliverance! And you, usurpers of the rights of the vanquished, triumph not without trembling at the tears which you have caused to flow. He lives, he will live for ever, who will never remain deaf to the lamentations of his people Israel. If he defers his justice, are you to cease to believe in him? Because he can wait, will your presumption know no bounds? Do you forget that God is patient because he is eternal?" [Footnote 157]

[Footnote 157: Della Carità Cristiani]

Patriotism was, however, a family tradition with Rosa Ferrucci. At the time of the memorable events which, in 1848, threatened the speedy overthrow of Austrian rule in Italy, Signer Ferrucci, with his colleagues in the University of Pisa, quitted his chair, and, at the head of the students, who had formed themselves into a body, set out for the army, accompanied by his young son. They took part in all the battles of that unfortunate campaign—at first in its victories, then in its reverses—and returned to Pisa only after the ruin of the last hope. These are facts too little known in the contemporary history of that unhappy Italy whose faults are the theme of every tongue, while few know how many noble hearts she can still produce.

We resume the correspondence:

August 4.

May I tell you, Gaetano, what I have been thinking about our future life? We must first, as we have so often said, have continually present to our minds the will of God, endeavor to accomplish it in all things, and be ever submissive to it from our inmost hearts. Then we must have but one heart and one soul in serving God, and I hope that we shall have but one heart also in loving our dear parents. What ingratitude would be ours if in our happiness we forgot them to whom we owe so much, and who loved us before we knew what love was! [Footnote 158]

[Footnote 158: "Prima che noi potessimo sapere che fosse amore."]

Let us endeavor so to regulate the affections of our hearts that one shall not be stifled by the other, but that all, forming a sweet harmony, may rise toward him who created us, and for whom alone we must live. May he alone be the end of all our actions and of all our thoughts! Then fatigue will never overcome our courage, our duties will never seem too heavy, our life will be calm, our intentions pure, and we shall taste even here below that interior peace,

"Which no one knows but he who feels it."

Such is the plan of our life. I have but lightly sketched it, fearing that I might seem to be giving counsels and prescribing rules to you. All this is possible only by the grace of God. Let us beg it through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin at the approaching festival of the Assumption; we have so great need of her protection and guidance.

"We pray for grace and it obtain
From her who is its mother."

September 15.

To-day I am as sad as I was joyous yesterday. Your departure, the thought of an inevitable separation from my father and mother, a thousand conflicting feelings in my heart, undefinable to myself, have made me weep. Alas for us women! we are weaker than the leaves which are stripped from the trees and scattered by the first wind of autumn; and, childhood scarce passed, our hearts, capable only of loving and suffering, are torn by a thousand contrary emotions of joy and sadness. Pardon me these murmurs, O my God! No, I ought not to weep, but ought rather to pour out my soul in thanksgiving.

I open my whole heart to you, Gaetano, because it is you who are to be the support of my life; to share all my thoughts, dispel my fears, and be my counsellor and guide. Singular thing! my new hopes have made all my feelings more keen and ardent. Hence those alternations of joy and sadness, to whose deepest emotions I was till lately a stranger. As it is, I do not know how I am to tear myself from the arms of those who watched over my childhood and who love me so much. But let us forget all this to-day. I can no longer speak of my mother without my eyes filling with tears. It is drawing near that dear October. If I cannot enjoy your ruralizing, I can, at least, be happy in thinking of the pleasure you will find in it. You are going to see your mountains again, and those pine-groves, which from my childhood I have ever loved and admired. In the midst of the flowers, the plants, the trees, you will think often of him who created us with souls capable of loving the beautiful and good; of him who this year has opened to you the horizon of a new life, in which I hope you will never find either regrets or thorns. Oh! how easy, as it seems to me, does the beauty of the country make the love of God. How sweet it is to think that the same God who gives the dews and the fertilizing rains to the earth, foliage to the trees, flowers and harvests to the fields, is also that loving Father who supports us in all our trials and so sweetly invites our souls to repose in himself! Let me speak to you of the good God, Gaetano; I love so much to think of him.

September 25.

I cannot express the pleasure it is to me to gaze into the deep azure of the beautiful mornings of which

"The air is sweet and changeless,"

and of the lovely evenings when the stars seem to speak, and tell in a sacred language the wisdom of God. The country does good to our souls. In admiring its beauties and its treasures ever new, we are led more easily to think that, if earth was made for man, man was created to love God. I often say to myself, What, then, will heaven be, if there is so much of beauty on this poor earth, where we are not so much dwellers as pilgrims? ... On the eve of St. John's day, all Florence was illuminated. There was nothing to be heard but games and noisy laughter among the people. Every one was gazing eagerly at the fireworks and the illuminations; but no one thought of admiring the most beautiful ornament of the feast—I mean the moon, whose tremulous rays were reflected in the Arno, lengthening the shadows of the trees.

September 28.

Next year we will go to the country together. If you knew how I love your mountains, with their tall pines, their flowers, their streams, and their green summits. I still remember the moment I left them. It was a November morning. The faint rays of a cloud-veiled sun shed a pale light on the horizon, the leaves were falling from the trees, and the snow of the day before still covered the summits. All nature was solitary and sad. Who could have told me then, that to this melancholy spot which I was leaving as a child, I should return with you a happy bride?

October 23.

Enjoy well your ruralizing; its pleasures are a thousand times sweeter than those of our towns. How pleasant it is of an evening to climb the heights, and thence behold the vast expanse of heaven still purpled by the sun's last rays; to see at one's feet the fields, the pine groves, the pale olives, the elms, yellow-tinted by autumn, the little, scattered cottages of the peasants, with the smoke of the evening fire rising from the roof, and the village church, which seems by the tolling of its bell "to mourn the dying day,"

"Il giorno pianger che si muore!"
[Transcriber's note: This sentence is blurred.]

I am far from all this now, but I often think of it. Again I see our happy day at Cuccigliana, our mountain walk, and that beautiful horizon, with its luminous depths, which promised me a joyous future. How many things nature can say! How she can speak to the heart! How, above all, she can speak to it of God! Flowers, hills, forests, earth, and sky—all are more beautiful when we have learned to discern in them the beauty of God. How many times already, Gaetano, have I gone over again our walk on the Serchio, where the rustling of the leaves was the only accompaniment to our long conversations! Ah! may God bless thee, may he render thee happy, and all my desires will be satisfied.

Eve of All Saints' Day.

Oh! if the feast of to-morrow should one day be our feast! Do not suppose, however, that I am presumptuous enough to hope that we shall ever be like the saints of our altars. No; but I believe that not only those great saints, but also all the souls of the just who are admitted to the beatific vision of God, are invoked on this great day by the church. This it is that emboldens my desires. ...

If you are sad, recollect that it has pleased God thus to alternate in this world our joys and sorrows, in order to implant more deeply in our souls the desire of that life in which weeping shall be no more. Then shall we be united I hope, in the love and blissful contemplation of that God whom we now adore under the veil of faith.

Meanwhile it is sweet to say to one's self: God loves me infinitely more than I can love myself. He thinks of me and watches over me with a tenderness surpassing all the tenderness of a mother. What, then, should I fear? And besides, how be Christians and not be willing to suffer for love of a God who has suffered so much for us? I would share these thoughts with you, Gaetano, because I find in them my strength and consolation every day. Treasure them in your heart, call them often to mind, and your sadness will disappear as

"La neve al sol si disigilla." [Footnote 159]

[Footnote 159: "The snow dissolves before the sun."]

I do not think we shall lose by the exchange when, having finished Milton, we read Virgil together. That great man seems to me indeed

"The light and honor of the other poets,"

as our Dante says. We shall reap from this reading the great advantage of being able to compare the principal episodes of the AEneid with the best passages of other poems. I assure you I do not regret the time I give to my little studies; if I had to commence them again, I should apply myself only with more diligence and attention. I owe to them the best pleasures that I have known; above all, I owe to them community of intellectual life with you. [Footnote 160]

[Footnote 160: I would for a moment call the reader's attention to this sentiment. Such should, indeed, be the chief end of the studies of every Christian woman—community of intellectual life with her husband, community of intellectual life with her sons.]

Now that I do not take lessons, and that, consequently, I have no more leisure, I know no more lively pleasure than to shut myself up in my little room with my books and my pen; and even during those hours which I ought and which I am determined to devote to needlework, I love still to think of what I have read and to beguile the time by these pleasant memories. Having had some time for study to-day, I resumed the reading of Muratori, taking the history of the wars of Odoacer and Theodoric. The subject is a familiar one, but I return to it always willingly, because I think the history of the middle ages even more important for us to know than ancient history. And then what joy of soul to see the church, in all places and in the most barbarous ages, the mother and guardian of civilization, the friend and consoler of the vanquished, the last bulwark of the oppressed against the unbridled pretensions of power!

Poor Italy! how she has suffered! What carnage! How much blood shed in vain! How many tears!

January 1, 1857.

Let us pray God, let us pray him with our whole heart to-day, Gaetano, to bless our union, our souls, our actions, our thoughts, our life. May he deign to preserve long those who are dear to us, to shield us from great misfortunes, and, above all, never to withdraw his grace from us! Such are the prayers that we will offer together, united in heart, though separated by distance. God will see the sincerity of our desires, and he will grant them.

The serenity of the heavens gladdens all nature, and rejoices also our souls, which in the light of the sun seem, as it were, a reflection of the Increated Light. I do not think I am superstitious, Gaetano; and if the new year had commenced in the midst of lightning, thunder, and dismal rains, I should certainly not, on that account, have augured ill for our future. But now, contemplating the calmness and pureness of the sky and of the whole horizon, I ask of God to give us a life like to this beautiful day, that is to say, such a life that nothing may ever be able to disturb in our souls that peace whose source is in God, its eternal fount.

January 4.

After some cold days, the weather has again become very mild, and the air is balmy as with the first perfumes of spring. How brightly the sun shines to-day! Its warm beams inundate my little room. Seated at my table, at some distance from the window, my eye wanders involuntarily to what I can see of the sky. I fancy I see a great blue eye looking down lovingly on me. Ah Gaetano! how good is God!

I have just learned the death of a very dear friend. Young, beautiful, brought up in opulence, the only daughter of a mother who idolized her, she wished to become a Sister of Charity in order to serve God in his poor. For ten years she has been a tender mother to the orphan, and she has just died in the bloom of her days. Dear and good Sister Maria! how happy I should have been to see her again! I do not cease thinking of her! Schiller would say here: "Cease to weep: tears do not resuscitate the dead." Ah! with what a far different power do the words addressed by the Redeemer to the afflicted come home to our hearts: "Blessed are they that weep, for they shall be comforted!" The more I meditate on these words, and then look on earth in its renewal, the pure light and deep azure of the sky, the more I am impressed, death notwithstanding, with the infinite goodness of God and the ineffable bliss of a future life. I hear sometimes of the good being oppressed by the wicked; I often see virtuous persons in misfortune; will not, then, the just also have their day and their recompense? Ah! often, when at night I raise my eyes toward the twinkling stars, I think of those happy souls who are there on high, higher than the stars, in the eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision, of adoration and love without end. If man would only fix his soul on such thoughts, what is there on earth that could discourage him?

I received your dear letter this morning, Gaetano, and lest you should suppose I thought it too gloomy, I must tell you that I, too, have been thinking of death the whole day, and that I even offered a special prayer to our Lord to be merciful to me when the hour shall have come for me to pass from time to eternity, and, as I hope, "from the human to the divine." We have need of abandoning ourselves with a child-like confidence into the arms of God, if we wish to keep alive in our hearts the hope of seeing in heaven him whom we adore on earth. For my part, if, instead of thinking of him alone, I turned to think of myself, I really know not whither my reflections might lead me. But hope, which is a Christian virtue, is a firm expectation of future glory, I will, then, forget my fears and believe that, despite our imperfections, we may one day taste in the bosom of God a happiness even of the shadow of which we cannot catch a glimpse on this earth. We shall then know in what overflowing measure the Lord rewards even the feeblest efforts of his friends. We shall know how everything here below was inevitably passing away with ourselves, how this earthly life vanished more lightly than a dream, and that there remains nothing to man after death but love, that ethereal part of the soul which God claims all for himself. Yet more: I believe that the love which shall unite and commingle our souls on high will not be absorbed in the contemplation of the divine essence in such a manner that the sweetness of loving each other still shall escape our perception. I believe, on the contrary, that it will be the triumph of love to exist and to endure in God, and to unite in one canticle of praise the souls which God made to love one another.

More sorrow—Matilda is dead! [Footnote 161] Oh! how we loved her. She was an angel! It is we only who suffer, for to her it is pure happiness to have quitted earth. Not a murmur was ever heard from her lips. She found all peace and all strength in the love of God. Her soul so easily opened itself to joy. The day before her death, seeing some flowers, "What beautiful things our God has made!" she exclaimed. Her friends wished to inform her father of her imminent danger. This she constantly opposed, wishing to spare that poor father the agony of a last farewell. Here are examples.

[Footnote 161: Matilda Manzoni, daughter of the celebrated author of I Promessi Sposi.]

I do not know the introduction you speak of; but my mother has read to me the admirable verses of Manzoni which are prefixed to it. How many things these verses recall to me. They have affected me powerfully. Returning in memory to the times that are past, I fancied as I listened to them that I heard the sweet voice of my poor Matilda, who, in reciting this beautiful poetry, evinced so tender an admiration for her father's genius. We were at Viareggio. It was a beautiful summer evening, and the peace of a starlit sky penetrated deep into our souls. Matilda said to me: "Rosa, if you could only tell me the first verse of those stanzas, I am sure I could recite the whole." For some time I ransacked my poor memory in vain. Suddenly came the word, "Pause awhile." That word was enough. Matilda recited without failing in a word—and oh! with what feeling—the whole piece of poetry. Dear friend! she is with us no longer, and we shall see her no more on earth. When I parted with her last, I said to her: "Farewell till we meet again." I ought to have said: "Farewell till we meet in heaven."

When the storm came upon us, [Footnote 162] two terrific peals of thunder were heard at once. I confess, Gaetano, I did not expect to reach Pisa. And oh! how terrible is the thought of death, when all around reminds one of the almighty power of God. I trembled as I thought of eternity. I saw my own nothingness, and that my only refuge was in the bosom of God. There did I cast myself with all the confidence of my soul. Unperceived by any one, I drew from my bosom my crucifix, and, concealing it in my hand, I pressed it to my lips. I felt then what help religion will give us in our last moments, for I immediately regained courage, and all my fears vanished.

[Footnote 162: Signorina Ferrucci was, with her parents, returning from Leghorn to Pisa, when they were surprised by a violent storm, which is the subject of this letter.]

To Signorina Louisa B——.

I received your sad and tender letter yesterday, my dear Louisa, and I answer it without delay, to prove to you that your sorrows are mine. Poor Antonietta! Yet, why weep for her? Her soul has winged its flight to the celestial regions, where, as she said in her delirium, all was ready to receive her. It is not to her, then—it is to you, to your family, to ourselves, that our tears belong. As soon as I heard the sad tidings, I raised my heart to God, and offered him a fervent prayer for your mother and yourself. As to Antonietta, I could not pray for her, because I saw her truly in the midst of the angelic choirs.

Dear friend, would that I could console you; but I feel with sadness my utter inability. It is God alone who has the secret of true consolation. Is not he our good Father? Does not he await us in that blessed abode where there are neither sorrows nor tears, but where reign eternal peace and happiness? And then, my poor Louisa, if life seemed to promise your dear sister happiness and joy, has not death put her in possession of joys more pure, happiness more profound, than she could ever have desired? Oh! how enviable is her lot. She will never know the troubles, the disappointments, the disenchantments of this life. She will be spared all the suffering which is inseparable from a long existence. Death has been to her a beautiful angel, come from heaven to crown her with flowers. Dry your tears, Louisa: your sister is happier than we.

To Gaetano,

Each day is bringing you nearer the mournful anniversary you spoke of in your last letter. I beg, I conjure you, Gaetano, to allow to your heart no sentiment but that of resignation. Remember that we shall see in heaven those who are taken from us on earth; and that the sufferings of this life are the means by which we are to attain endless beatitude. I speak thus, not to preach patience to you, which it would ill become me to do, but to give you a word of consolation; for I know all that you have suffered, all that you still suffer in secret. The cares of business and the multiplicity of exterior duties will not prevent sorrowful memories from taking possession of your soul. You can, then, but offer your sufferings as a sacrifice, believing that they will render us more worthy of the divine love. If I already shared your life, I would do everything in my power to console and encourage you on these sad days. Meanwhile let us both strive each day to lessen our imperfections, and to let the love of God have fuller scope in our hearts. Thus shall we, if not without fear, at least without remorse, reach that solemn moment of our life, the one that will end it. May God, who, we hope, will one day unite us on earth by holy ties, deign to unite us also in heaven!

January 21.
(Three days before the commencement of her illness.)

Truly we must be always ready to die when and as God wills, and to love him infinitely more than all the things of this world which are passing away with our frail lives. Our immortal soul is not made for this world, where all is fleeting, dissolving, changing. By the very nature of its being, it yearns for heaven. For me, living or dead, in this world or the next, I will be ever thine, my Gaetano, in the love that God knows and blesses.

This letter is the last that Rosa Ferrucci wrote.

Concluded In Next Number.

The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City.

A glance at New York City, embracing the entire of Manhattan Island, will show that its geographical position, its advantages for sewerage and drainage, in fact for everything that would make it salubrious and healthy, cannot be surpassed by any city in this or any other country. And still, with its bountiful supply of nature's choicest gifts, many of our readers will be surprised to hear that our death-rate is higher than that of any city on this continent, or any of the larger cities of Europe. We append a table showing the relative per annum mortality in various cities:

City | Death. Population.
New York | 1 in 35
London | 1 in 45
Paris | 1 in 40
Copenhagen | 1 in 36

Christiansund,
(Norway.)

1 in 40

Liverpool | 1 in 44
Philadelphia | 1 in 48
Boston | 1 in 41
Newark, N. J | 1 in 44
Providence | 1 in 45
Hartford | 1 in 54
Rochester | 1 in 44

[Footnote 163]

[Footnote 163: Health in Country and Cities. W. F. Thorns, M. D.]

Let us first examine the conditions which favor and cause this excessively high death-rate, and then approximate as nearly as possible what our percentage of mortality should be, under good hygienic regulations.

The primary cause of the present condition is, evidently, in the packing system of the tenant-houses; and how the unfortunates exist in the fetid air and dirt of these dens, it is impossible to imagine. The name tenant-house is applied to all buildings containing three or more families. There are at present in our city 18,582 of these residences. In these live over a half-million of people, or more than half of our entire population. These houses vary in condition, from the apartments over stores on our prominent thoroughfares, which often contain all the comforts and conveniences of more aristocratic and imposing structures, through many gradations to the cellar, garrets, and model tenant-houses, occupied by the most miserable of our inhabitants. Such an economy of space was never known to be displayed in sheltering cattle as is here shown in the houses, if they can be so called, of the laboring classes. We give a description of one of these establishments, for the benefit of those who have never examined a "model tenant-house." On a lot 25 by 100 feet two buildings are erected, one in the front, the second in the rear. Between the houses is a yard or open space, in which are located rows of stalls to be used as water-closets. The buildings are frequently seven and eight stories high, including basement. Through the middle of each house runs a hall three to four feet wide. On each side of the hall are the apartments, as they are termed, more properly coops or dens. There are sometimes three or four sets of these coops to each half, making six or eight families to the floor; and so they are packed, from the cellar to the roof of the establishment. As the term "suites of apartments" is rather deceptive to the uninitiated, we will state this means simply two—one, the common room, where all the cooking, washing, and other family work is performed, and in some instances used additionally for manufacturing purposes, as shoe-making, tailoring, etc.; the other is the sleeping-room. The first is generally 8 feet by 10, and the second 7 by 8, with an average height of 7 feet. "Not unfrequently two families—yea, four families—live in one of these small sets of dens; and in this manner as many as 126 families, numbering over 800 souls, have been packed into one such building, and some of the families taking boarders and lodgers at that. And worse yet, all around such tenements, or in close proximity to them, stand slaughter-houses, stables, tanneries, soap factories, and bone-boiling establishments, emitting life-destroying exhalations." [Footnote 164]

[Footnote 164: Mr. Dyer's Report on the Condition of the Destitute and Outcast Children of this city.]

Imagine rows of such houses, so close to each other as to shut out the air and sunlight from their inmates, and you have a picture of the condition of some portions of the lower wards of New York City. Of the 18,582 tenant-houses. Dr. E. B. Dalton, the Sanitary Superintendent, reports "52 per cent in bad sanitary condition, that is, in a condition detrimental to the health and dangerous to the lives of the occupants, and sources of infection to the neighborhood generally; 32 per cent are in this condition purely from overcrowding, accumulations of filth, want of water-supply, and other results of neglect." Dr. E. Harris, the efficient Register of Vital Statistics for the Board of Health, informs us that, although the Fourth ward has given up nearly one half its space for mercantile purposes, it still retains the population it had in 1864. This is effected by driving the poor tenants into smaller space and more miserable dens, which they are obliged to accommodate themselves to, as there is no rapid transportation at their command by which they could reach homes in more salubrious districts, and still retain their employment in this section. The result is, that in some locations the people are packed at the rate of nearly 300,000 to the square mile. Here are congregated the vilest brothels, the lowest dance-houses, and other dens of infamy. It is doubtful if throughout Europe, and certainly in no other part of America, in the same amount of space, so much vice, immorality, pauperism, disease, and fearful depravity could be found, as some of the worst of these locations present daily for our consideration. Our readers must not suppose, from our frequent references to the Fourth ward, that it contains all of this character of trouble existing in New York. This is not the case. In portions of all the wards in the lower part of the island, as well as up-town by either river-side as high as Fiftieth street, will the same condition be found, but not in so concentrated a form as in the Fourth Ward and its immediate surroundings, which has for a long time held the unenviable reputation of being the worst locality on the island.

Practical hygienists give 1000 cubic feet as the standard amount of air-space for each individual. Dr. W. F. Thoms, in his pamphlet on Tenant-Houses, thinking that quantity impracticable in this character of building, gives 700 cubic feet as the minimum in which a person can live and not be injured by the carbonic acid he constantly expires. With many of the 'fever-nests' not more than 300 to 400 feet to the individual are given; and Captain Lord's report shows that in 289 houses the quantity allowed each inmate is only between 100 and 300 cubic feet.

The zymotic or foul-air diseases, as they are termed by some, formed 29.36 per cent of our total mortality during last year. [Footnote 165]

[Footnote 165: Dr. Harris's Report.]

Belonging to this class are the diarrhoeal maladies, Asiatic cholera, cholera-morbus, typhoid and typhus fevers, small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, and others of this kind; also the dietetic disorders, inanition, scurvy, etc. It will be readily seen that, in such locations as are above described, a very large proportion of the mortality from this class must arise. Consumption also, which might properly be termed the constant scourge of the human family, assists largely in running up our death-table. The late Archbishop Hughes, in speaking of this disease, said "it was the natural death of the Irish emigrant in this country." This remark is equally true of persons coming from all other countries, partially on account of foreigners not being acclimated to the vicissitudes of our climate, but more particularly because so many of them dwell in damp, leaky shanties, or in cellars which are frequently below the level of high water. Here the seeds of the disease are planted by which the miserable victims of hectic fever, night-sweats, and other attendant evils are hurried to their untimely graves. In the fifteen months ending December 31st, 1867, 4123 persons died in our city of this disease. The largest number of these were between the ages of 25 and 40. One thousand seven hundred and sixty-five were natives of Ireland, 1430 were Americans, 600 Germans, and 328 from other foreign countries.

Upon the infants, however, of these polluted districts death fastens his relentless grasp, and from their ranks under the age of five years he claimed last year over one half the entire mortality of the city. The blood of these innocents is poisoned from birth by the noxious influences of bad air and adulterated food; consequently their nutrition is defective, and the majority of them are found frail, puny, and miserable. In this condition they are little able to stand the irritation attendant upon the process of dentition, and during this period a large number of them rapidly sink from diarrhoea, marasmus, or some kindred disorder.

Seven thousand four hundred and ninety-four of these little ones died last year under twelve months of age. This is supposed to be little less than one fourth of all the infants born alive during the same period. Is it not enough to send a thrill of horror to the breast of every mother, to think that one out of every four infants born, must perish before it reaches its first birthday?

"This is well known to be twice too high a death-rate for the first year of infant life, and experience demonstrates, that the infant death-rate is a safe index of the general rate of mortality, both in the total population and in the adults of any city or district. That is, if in the Sixth ward we find a high death-rate in children, and if it is vastly higher than that in the children of the Fifteenth ward, then we shall find (as we actually have found) that the death-rate is excessively high in the total number of adult inhabitants of the Sixth, while there is a very low death-rate in the Fifteenth that buries the smallest percentage of its infants." [Footnote 166]

[Footnote 166: Dr. Harris's Report.]

An easy solution to this is found in the greater susceptibility of early infancy from extreme delicacy of formation. Just as the accurate thermometer indicates immediately every change in the temperature, so these frail organizations blight first under detrimental influences, before the more matured portion of the population are perceptibly affected by the same causes. The following will strikingly elucidate the greater expectation for human life to persons living in even comparatively salubrious districts. The death-rate in the Fourth ward, in 1863, was about 1 in 25 of the population; in the Fifteenth, in the same year, it was 1 in 60.

Why should this wide difference in the mortality exist in two sections of the same city adjacent to each other? The reason is obvious: there are but few of the densely over-crowded tenant-houses in the Fifteenth or healthy ward, while the Fourth presents a population of nearly 20,000 souls packed in these buildings. Thus it is shown that persons living in the Fifteenth ward, have two and a half times more chances for life than those residing in the Fourth.

The all-important question to the social economist now recurs: What is the necessary or inevitable mortality of the total population of this city? We cannot do better than refer to the mortality above given for the Fifteenth ward, which is 1 in 60. Why is it not practicable to bring our sanitary regulations to such perfection as to reduce the mortality of the entire city to near this standard? Thus we would save many lives, now sacrificed by diseases which we have the power in a great measure to control; and we would lessen the general death-rate of the city to between 16,000 and 17,000 to the 1,000,000, instead of ranging, as it now does, from 23,000 to 26,000 to the same amount of population.

To look at this fearful drain of human life is painful enough; but the moral aspect of the subject will be found even more deplorable. The constant inhalation of vitiated air lowers the vitality and poisons the entire organism, and, as a natural consequence, predisposes these unfortunates to a continual desire for stimulation. This, in fact, is a manifestation of nature, which, by a wise dispensation of Providence, when depressed or disordered from any cause, has a constant tendency toward health. They, however, do not appreciate that pure air, cleanliness, and substantial food would quench this natural longing; but they seek that which is more gratifying to their depraved appetites; as for the time being it steals their reason and blunts their sensibility to present misery. These facts account to a great extent for the large number of rum-holes found in the neighborhood of these tenant rookeries, which is reported in certain localities to be one for less than every two houses. Many of these low groggeries are so disgustingly filthy, and their poisonous compounds so corrupting of every moral feeling, that they can properly be placed on an equality with the despicable Chinese opium-dens found in the neighborhood of Whitechapel in London. The following figures demonstrate the immense number of votaries who frequent drinking-saloons in this city, and the vast sums of money squandered annually in these degrading haunts: "There are at present 5203 licensed rum-shops in New York; 697,202 persons visit these daily, 4,183,212 in a week, and 218,224,226 in a year. The total amount of money paid out for drinks across the bar and at the drinking-tables of the liquor-shops of New York is $736,280.59 a week, or $38,286,590.68 a year." [Footnote 167]

[Footnote 167: Dyer's Report.]

This is the account of the licensed bar-rooms: how many unlicensed ones exist it is impossible to know. When we consider that the highest estimate made of our population gives us only 1,000,000 of inhabitants, the foregoing figures certainly are astounding, and deserve most earnest consideration. In connection with this subject, it will be interesting to examine the annals of crime for the past year. There were 80,532 [Footnote 168] arrests made during the twelve months ending October 31st, 1867.

[Footnote 168: Report Metropolitan Police.]

These embrace offences of every grade, from petty larceny to murder. The number of the latter is 59, or an average of more than one a week. This total number of criminals amounts to nearly one twelfth of our entire population, and certainly shows a very low grade of morals in our community. It would be most interesting to know what proportion of these criminals date the commencement of their career in crime, from the time they began to drink intoxicating liquors.

One of the saddest features in our city is the condition of the homeless children. "The number of these between the ages of five and fifteen years is stated to be 200,900, of which not more than 75,000 attend Sunday-school, leaving the vast number of 125,000 of our children unreached and uncared for, of which it has been estimated that nearly 40,000 are vagrant children." [Footnote 169] "Hundreds of these children are confirmed drunkards, and thousands of them are accustomed to strong drink. Children from the age of fourteen years down to infants of four are daily met in a state of intoxication. They come drunk to the mission-schools. The little creatures have many a time lain stretched upon the benches of this institution, (Howard Mission,) sleeping off their debauch. Hundreds of them have become veteran thieves, and thousands more are in training for the same end. Nine hundred and sixty girls and 3,958 boys, between the ages of ten and fifteen years—making a total of 4618—were arrested during the year ending October 31st, 1867, for drunkenness and petty crimes." [Footnote 170]

[Footnote 169: R. G. Pardee, Esq., communication to New York Observer.]

[Footnote 170: Dyer's Report.]

The arrests for the same period between the ages of ten and twenty years amounts to the fearful number of 13,660. Is it not melancholy to contemplate these little creatures, "made to the image and likeness of God," allowed to develop in such haunts of crime, every faculty as soon as awakened blunted by the atmosphere of sin surrounding them? If not rescued from their fate at an early age, we know they are the embryo criminals who will in the future fill our prisons and grace our scaffolds. How can it be otherwise? Nurtured in a hot-bed of crime from infancy, educated in pilfering and beggary in childhood, it is but human that they should develop these accomplishments in rank luxuriance as they grow to manhood. It seems strange that Mr. Bergh's attention has never been drawn to the condition of the miserable tenants and the homeless children. He and the rest of his society take every means to remedy the complaints of ill-used quadrupeds; but unfortunate biped humanity may be stalled in filthy dens with imperfect drainage and no ventilation, or, the little ones starve and die on our thoroughfares, without finding a humanitarian to raise a voice in their behalf. It is true, our cattle should be cared for, but a just God will demand at our hands some protection for his poor.

"He has said—his truths are all eternal—
What he said both has been and shall be—
What ye have not done to these my poor ones,
Lo! ye have not done it unto me." [Footnote 171]

[Footnote 171: Proctor.]

The radical relief for the evils growing out of the tenant-house system can only be reached by, first, condemning and tearing down the worst class of these buildings; and, secondly, remodelling those which, by their construction, are susceptible of such improvement as will insure the inmates at least the blessings of sunshine and pure air.

These stringent measures are unfortunately, for the present, impracticable, as, should they be carried into effect, two thirds of the inhabitants of these dens would be thrown upon the streets without shelter. Space must be found adjacent to the city where neat and comfortable cottages can be built for the laboring classes, and transportation of such character provided as will enable them to reach these abodes in as little time and at as small an expense as it now consumes to get to their tenant dwellings. The beautiful shores on the opposite sides of the Hudson and East rivers must eventually be dotted by the villages of these working people. It has been reported that a very wealthy gentleman of our community proposes building a number of such houses somewhere in the vicinity of New York. To be the projector of such a philanthropic enterprise would entitle him to the love and admiration of the people now, while in after-years it would be pointed out as a monument of his generosity to the struggling poor. The proposed "Hudson Highland Bridge," the "East River Bridge," and the tunnel under the East River, all of which, we hope, will be pressed rapidly to completion, will form the first of the links which are to bind our Island City to the surrounding rural districts. The location where the first will span the Hudson is near Fort Montgomery, in the Highlands; the second is intended to connect the lower part of the city with Brooklyn; and the iron tubular tunnel is, as its name indicates, a wrought-iron tunnel, to be laid at the bottom of the East River; it also is to connect Brooklyn with New York. In a sanitary point of view, we think these proposed means for rapid communication between our island and the neighboring country vie in importance with the gigantic enterprise which gives us the water of the Croton river for our daily consumption, and the Central Park for the recreation and amusement of our pent-up population. Over the East River Bridge it is intended to run cars by an endless wire rope, worked by an engine under the flooring on the Brooklyn side. The minimum rate of speed is put down as twenty miles an hour. It is such travelling facilities as these structures will afford which are necessary to enable the workingmen to reach healthful and salubrious homes outside of the metropolis. We would thus be able to disgorge the immense surplus of population which it is impossible for us to accommodate in our midst.

But while we keep this in our minds as the great ultimatum which will eventually relieve us, we must in the mean time use every effort in our power to ameliorate as much as possible the misery surrounding us.

Since the establishment of the Board of Health, in March, 1866, strenuous efforts have been made by that body to remedy the most glaring defects in the tenant-houses. Nothing could bear better evidence of the good results effected by the wise sanitary measures they have adopted than the saving in our mortality rates during the last year. It has been asserted that "our present code of health laws are better than those of any other city on this planet;" and had the commissioners, in the execution of these laws, been sustained in their laudable efforts for the public good by the courts of justice, no doubt much more would have been effected. The Sanitary Superintendant, Dr. E. B. Dalton, reports 35,045 inspections made during the last year; 11,414 of these were in tenement-houses, 11,473 to yards, cellars, waste-pipes, etc.; the remainder, to private dwellings, slaughter-houses, establishments for fat-melting and bone-boiling, stables, piggeries, etc. This amount of visitations by the sanitary inspectors shows great activity in their department, and entitles them to much credit. The evils, however, attending the entire of the present systems are so numerous that, without a good deal of active legislation, it is to be feared the root of the trouble cannot be reached. In the first place, no person should be allowed, in the future, to build a house to be occupied by more than three or four families, without its plan of construction being first officially approved of by an appointed superintendent. This would confine the sanitary evils, so far as the internal arrangement of tenements are concerned, to those we now have; and, in the second place, as Dr. Dalton suggests, the erection of a front and rear tenement on the same lot should be strictly prohibited. The importance of these means cannot be overestimated. In addition, many changes apparently slight in themselves can be effected in the existing houses, which would materially add to the comfort and chances of life of the inmates. Miss F. Nightingale says: "It is a fact demonstrated by statistics, that in the improved dwellings the mortality has fallen in certain cases from 25 to 14 per 1000; and that in the common 'lodging-houses,' which have been hot-beds of epidemics, such diseases have almost disappeared through the adoption of sanitary measures." One condition probably more pregnant with disease to the tenants than almost any other is, that so large a percentage of the water-closets in the tenant buildings are not connected with the regular sewers. The consequence is, these places become choked up with accumulations of filth, and give forth noisome and offensive odors, most detrimental to health. This alone is sufficient to cause a large amount of the diarrhoeal diseases which pervade our community during the hot season with such fatal results. The inspector of the Fourth Sanitary District, for the Citizens' Association, in 1864, reported "less than 30 per cent of the privies in his district as being connected with drains or sewers." He also says: "There is a section of my district, embracing at least nine blocks, in every part of which the peculiar odor arising from privies is always distinctly perceptible during the summer months. From this region fever is never absent. I refer to typhus and typhoid, for intermittent and remittent fever do not prevail in this neighborhood, even in the low tract adjoining the river. Such a gentle fiend as paludal miasma flies affrighted from the terrific phantoms of disease that reign supreme in this domain of pestilence." The landlords who grind the last cent of rent possible from their tenants should be obliged, at least, to do all in their power to preserve them from palpable occasions of disease. At a small expense in comparison to the income this class of property yields, the proper connections with the sewers could be made, and thus much suffering avoided.

One great trouble the sanitarian encounters is, the disinclination of a large portion of this class to adopt habits of cleanliness. They seem actually to riot in and be proud of their filthy surroundings. And their example is unfortunately contagious, as it is known frequently to be the case that where neat, clean, and respectable families are thrown in contact with them, they, too, soon degenerate into the same condition. "It would be true of many thousands that, if left to the uncontrolled indulgence of their reckless and filthy habits, they would convert a palace into a pig-sty, and create 'fever-nests' and hot-beds of vice and corruption under circumstances most favorable to health, comfort, and social elevation." [Footnote 172]

[Footnote 172: Report of Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor in New York. 1863.]

This fact, although discouraging, should be but a greater incentive to keep constantly over them a vigilant sanitary inspection, to show them the baneful effects of their habits of living, and to cause a spirit of emulation to assist themselves in purifying their homes and surroundings. This can be done. Their "reckless and filthy habits" are, in many instances, but the indication of a lowered moral and physical status, the result of the poverty, starvation, and misery they have endured. A little encouragement, and a constant stimulation as to the right means to be adopted, would soon cause many of them to overcome their vitiated and depraved tastes.

These combined facts, we think, necessitate a thorough house to house examination of all this character of property in the city, by competent sanitary persons, so that the Sanitary Superintendent may know the exact condition of each tenement. With such knowledge many advantageous improvements could be made and many nuisances abated, without waiting for a report from either the occupants or sanitary police, as is now done. This action is at present rendered more essential as the summer is coming on, and under the influence of its long, hot days the animal and vegetable decomposition will make the air putrid with its "life-destroying exhalations." Our death-rate from the diarrhoeal, and other miasmatic diseases, will, as usual, run up to the highest mark; and should cholera get a foothold in the city, it is questionable if it could be controlled by the Health Commissioners as readily as it was in the summer of 1866.

The question, how to deal wisely with the abuse of alcoholic stimulants, has been earnestly discussed and considered by the press, by municipal and legislative bodies, from the pulpit, and also by countless temperance associations, without reaching a solution of this great problem. Philanthropic efforts are constantly made to stop the tide of self-destruction without avail; and the originators of such movements seem all to arrive at the conclusion that it is impossible to thoroughly restrain the appetite for strong drinks by any character of laws which may be enacted. The only resource that remains is to throw around the trade such restrictions as will confine it to its narrowest limits. This is to be effected not alone by legislative enactments, but also by a moral and religious influence. Public opinion has great weight, and every man who loves the well-being of his race should frown down this social evil to the utmost of his power. Ministers of the gospel should persistently teach the enormity of the ills resulting, as they alone fully know, from this cause.

A great many persons think the present laws have no influence in restraining drunkenness, and that as much liquor is consumed now as formerly. As a proof of their efficacy, we will give here a portion of a table, taken from the report of the Excise Commissioners for last year, comparing the number of arrests for offences actually resulting from the excessive indulgence in intoxicating drinks on Sundays, when the rum-sellers were obliged to keep their glittering shops closed the entire day, and Tuesdays, when the prohibition applied only to before sunrise.

Months. | Year. | Days. | Arrests.
March, | 1867 | 5 Sundays, | 210
March, | 1867 | 4 Tuesdays, | 471
April, | 1867 | 4 Sundays, | 195
April, | 1867 | 5 Tuesdays, | 480
May, | 1867 | 4 Sundays, | 123
May, | 1867 | 4 Tuesdays, | 380

As it is well known that before the enaction of these laws the arrests on Sunday far exceeded those of any other day in the week, this should convince the most sceptical of the effect of the Sunday prohibition.

The estimated number of vagrant children in this city is nearly 40,000. Forty thousand immortal beings floating, day by day, toward physical and moral destruction! Throw aside all the dictates of Christianity, and look upon these children in the future. According to our free institutions, they will have the same amount of control over the destinies of the nation as our own offspring, although the latter may be thoroughly educated to make good and intelligent citizens. Here we are allowing to be nurtured the element which, in the riots of 1863, threatened to deluge the length and breadth of the island with tumult, conflagration, and bloodshed. Every year, with the constantly increasing tide of emigration, new material is added to develop this character at a more rapid rate. Such being the case, self-protection demands that something be done to give these children homes and draw them from the pollution surrounding them. In the lower portion of the city, there are some institutions intended particularly to take care of these little vagrants, and they form the only breakwater to this torrent of infantile depravity. The first of these is the Five Points Mission. This was established under "An Act," passed in March, 1856, by the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York, "to incorporate the Ladies' Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church." The intentions of the ladies forming this association are shown in the second paragraph of the above-named act, and reads: "The objects of said society are, to support one or more missionaries, to labor among the poor of the city of New York, especially in the locality known as the 'Five Points;' to provide food, clothing, and other necessaries for such poor; to educate poor children and provide for their comfort and welfare; and, for that purpose, to maintain a school at the Five Points, in said city, and to perform kindred acts of charity and benevolence." The "Old Brewery," a most notorious den of infamy, just at the Five Points, was selected by the association as headquarters for their missionary labors; and to gather round them here the little ones of this worst location of the city, to be fed, clothed, and instructed in the rudimentary English branches, as well as the Methodist Episcopal faith, became a labor of love. This enterprise prospered, and now, in place of the "Old Brewery," stands a large, commodious mission-building. A peculiar feature in the management is, that entire families are taken in, and given work of some kind to do, so that it forms a character of tenant-house. The institution contains some 18 families, including between 60 and 70 children. One thousand and nineteen children have been taught during the year in the day-school. Immediately opposite and facing this is the second of these institutions, the "Five Points House of Industry." This was established under the supervision of the same gentleman who at first had control of the Five Points Mission, the Rev. L. M. Pease. Through some misunderstanding, he withdrew from the mission and founded the House of Industry. His beginning was very small, and consisted of an effort to obtain work for a number of unhappy females who desired to escape from their criminal way of living. His next step was the establishment of a day-school; soon afterward men and women were employed in making shoes, baskets, etc. The success of the enterprise was quickly assured, and it rapidly enlarged its sphere of usefulness. Some time since, the manufacturing of baskets, shoes, etc., was given up, and it is now simply a house of refuge, where homeless children are educated, fed, and clothed. During the winter, a meal was given, in the middle of the day, to destitute adults. One of the gentlemen informed us that 325 men and women partook of this meal daily during the cold weather. The average number of children given three meals was also 325, making 1300 meals given by this institution daily. The whole number of children taught here during the last year was 1289. An interesting feature connected with this enterprise is the boarding-house which has recently been established for working-girls. A large tenement-house was bought, and fitted up in the most complete manner; and here homeless working-girls can get good, substantial board for three dollars and a quarter a week. This is of great advantage to these poor young women, who are overworked at meagre pay, and enables them to live for about one half the price they would be obliged to pay for board in a respectable lodging-house. In the internal arrangements, everything is done to add to the comfort as well as the mental improvement of the inmates. In the public parlor there are an organ and a piano, also several sewing-machines. These are at the disposal of any one in the house, at all times. Two evenings in the week they have night-school. The Germans teach their language in exchange for English. The matron states: "Through the kindness of some publishers, we have 5 daily papers, 12 weeklies, and 4 monthlies. Three daily German papers are sent us; also a German magazine, published at Leipsic, Germany." Some six years ago, the third of the houses for this special work was established at No. 40 New Bowery, by the Rev. W. E. Van Meter. The Howard Mission (as this establishment is called) far exceeds the House of Industry in its internal appearance. The latter, with its massive bare walls and iron gratings resembles more a prison for culprits than a home for little ones. The former, to the contrary, is built with a desire to surround the children with everything that can please and attract them. The assistant superintendent remarked to us that "their wish had been to make their mission home more beautiful and enticing than any saloon could be." The two large halls are neatly finished and artistically adorned. In the lower one, through the benevolence of a gentleman, a fountain is constantly playing, several hanging baskets of moss and evergreens swing from the ceiling, and at the base of the fountain is a pretty reservoir containing gold-fish. This institution has received, in six years, 7581 children; and the March number of the Little Wanderers' Friend, published by this house, states that "for this month (February) 619 children have been fed at its tables, clothed from its wardrobes, and taught in its schools." These houses all have their regular religious services, morning, noon, and night, with Sunday-schools, singing, and prayer-meetings. On Sunday mornings, the prisoners from some of the station-houses, under arrest for disorder and drunkenness the night previous, are taken to the Howard Mission, and furnished with coffee and bread, and then, before leaving, they have a religious discourse preached to them. In addition, these houses have regular visitors, who call at the homes of those making complaints, to assist and comfort the sick, and, at the same time, to find out if the statements given by them are correct. In order that those not familiar with the workings of such institutions may see the charitable work these ladies effect, we extract the first two items from the visitors' diary in the April number of the Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry, 1866:

"Called on Mrs. L—— , Irish Catholic; is a widow, with two small boys; tells me she cannot get enough work to support the family; would be willing to sew, wash, pick hair, or any of the various female employments, if she could get it. We offered to feed and clothe her boys if she would send them to our school, which she readily promised.

"Visited Mrs. G——, 31 M—— street, Irish Catholic. She lives in a small attic room, rear building; is a widow, with one child; has been but a few days out of the hospital; found her little girl sick with fever; promised to send a doctor and give her necessary assistance."

Although these institutions are doing something by their work to alleviate the condition of a portion of this vast army of 40,000 stray waifs, still it is most evident that they are utterly inadequate to provide for more than a small fraction of this number. It is well known that nearly one half the population of this city profess to be members of the Roman Catholic religion; and, to show the great excess of persons belonging to this church among the lower classes in our city, we extract the following analysis of a block of buildings from the Little Wanderers' Friend for March, 1868: "Fifty-nine old buildings occupied by 382 families, in which are 2 Welsh, 7 Portuguese, 9 English, 10 Americans, 12 French, 39 negroes, 186 Italians, 189 Polanders, 218 Germans, and 812 Irish. Of these, 113 are Protestants, 287 Jews, and 1062 Roman Catholics."

The Catholic Reformatory in Westchester county, established by the late Dr. Ives, is doing everything possible for the children under its control; but the little vagrants, unless arrested for some petty crime and thus committed to that institution, are not within reach of its benefits.

The Rev. F. H. Farrelly, the pastor of St. James's church, has labored most zealously during the last three years in the cause of the Catholic children in his immediate vicinity. He has established a poor-school in the basement of his church, under the charge of the Sisters of Charity. The average daily attendance here is 200, and these are furnished with a meal at noon, in order to facilitate their remaining in the institution the entire day. During the year, two suits of clothing are furnished to as many as the good father's means will permit. This school will be removed to the very elegant five-story mission-house, now nearly completed, on the corner of James street and New Bowery. This structure is of brick with freestone trimmings, and has a front of 111 feet on New Bowery, and 83 feet on James street. It will be divided into 21 class-rooms. This enterprise will take more means for its support than St. James's parish can possibly furnish, and it deserves and should have the sympathy and pecuniary assistance of all Catholics.

It is impossible to calculate the amount of good to be effected by the establishment of a large home, under the supervision of the Sisters of Charity or Mercy in this location. These good ladies are peculiarly adapted to care for the wants of the poor, the sick, and the afflicted, as they devote all their energies, according to the intention of their institution, to these classes of society. And why? Because simply in so doing they fulfil the wishes of "The Master." Thus their mission is one of love, and to strictly attend to duty the greatest pleasure of their lives. This is the solution of their great success in the management of hospitals, schools, and charitable institutions; and the large number of their magnificent edifices devoted to these purposes, found throughout almost every portion of the known world, attest the success with which God blesses their labors. To these good sisters the poor emigrants could appeal, without even apparently denying their religion, for a little sustenance to keep their miserable bodies from perishing; the sorrow-burdened could communicate their troubles, confident of a ready sympathy; and to these the homeless little vagrant could come, knowing a mother's tender love and gentle forbearance awaited him. In the home a room should be devoted to the use of mothers—a place where they could leave their babes to be fed and taken care of for the day. This would enable poor widows to do washing and other kinds of work, and thus many could support their families who are now entirely dependent upon public charity. In addition to the home, a large farm should be procured near the city, where the children taken permanently under the care of the institution could be raised and educated. This is advisable, because, in the first place, it would be more economical, and secondly, experience demonstrates that a large body of children do not thrive well in such establishments when located in cities. We feel confident there would be no trouble in supporting this home, as the great Catholic heart always responds liberally to appeals made for the poor, and in this institution the weight of the burden should be equally borne by all the Catholics in the city. In addition to all this, to take care of these little wanderers is a matter of great import in the light of political economy. They form the fountain-head from which a large proportion of our criminals are developed. If they could be made useful members of society, it would relieve the city of a large proportion of the taxation which is now necessary to support our various prisons; and the energy now shown in the commission of crime would become a source of material wealth to the country.

There is one other subject we wish to mention before concluding this paper: it is, the condition of the night-lodgers at the station-houses. From the report of the Board of Metropolitan Police, we find that 105,460 persons were accommodated with lodgings at the various precincts during the last twelve months. Mr. S. C. Hawley, the very accommodating chief clerk of this department, informs us that the number this year will be much greater. Over 100,000 sought refuge in the station-houses, glad to obtain the bare floor to rest their weary limbs; but how many pace our streets nightly, poverty-stricken and despairing, but too proud to seek a shelter in these abodes of crime! It is a stigma on the fair fame of this great city that, throughout its length and breadth, there is not one refuge, established by religious or philanthropic efforts, where the homeless can find shelter from the wintry night blasts.

"Our beasts and our thieves and our chattels
Have weight for good or for ill;
But the poor are only his image,
His presence, his word, his will;
And so Lazarus lies at our doorstep,
And Dives neglects him still." [Footnote 173]

[Footnote 173: Proctor.]

In Montreal, Canada, refuges are connected with the church property, and are superintended by the female religious orders, we think more particularly by the Gray Nuns. In 1860, the Providence Row Night Refuge was established in London, under the care of the Sisters of Mercy. There is no distinction made as regards religious creed, and the only requisites necessary for admission are, to be homeless and of good character. Before retiring, a half-pound of bread and a basin of gruel are given to each lodger, and the same in the morning, before they are allowed to commence another day's efforts to obtain work. What charity could so directly appeal to our hearts as this? Think how many men and women arrive daily in this metropolis, in search of employment! For days they eagerly seek it without success, hoarding their scanty means to the uttermost. Finally the time comes when the last dime is spent for bread, and they wander along, their hearts filled with dread, as night covers the earth with her sable mantle, knowing not whither they shall turn their weary steps. Think of the poor woman wending her way through the pelting storm; garments soaked and clinging to the chilled form; heart filled with despair, and crying to Heaven for shelter; head aching, temples throbbing, brain nearly crazed with terror; finally, crouching down under some old steps to wait the first gleam of day to relieve her from her agony. If one in such condition should reach the river-side, what a fearful temptation it must be to take that final leap which ends for ever earth's cares and sufferings, or, still worse for the poor female, the temptation to seek in sin the refuge denied her in every other way!

"There the weary come, who through the daylight
Pace the town and crave for work in vain:
There they crouch in cold and rain and hunger,
Waiting for another day of pain.

"In slow darkness creeps the dismal river;
From its depths looks up a sinful rest.
Many a weary, baffled, hopeless wanderer
Has it drawn into its treacherous breast!

"There is near another river flowing.
Black with guilt and deep as hell and sin:
On its brink even sinners stand and shudder—
Cold and hunger goad the homeless in." [Footnote 174]

[Footnote 174: Proctor.]

What a mute appeal for such institutions is the case of the little Italian boy found dead on the steps of one of our Fifth avenue palaces last winter! Think of this little fellow as he slowly perished that bitter night, at the very feet of princely wealth. How his thoughts must have reverted to his dark-browed mother in her far-off sunny home! And think of that mother's anguish, her wailing

"For a birdling lost that she'll never find,"

when she heard of her boy's death, from cold and starvation, in the principal avenue of all free America! We consider we are safe in saying that in no other work of charity could a small amount of money be made to benefit so many as in the founding of these refuges. In the police report it is recommended that "several of these be established in different parts of the city, to be under the supervision of the police." This is a great mistake. These people always associate station-houses and the police with crime; consequently it is bad policy for them to come constantly in contact with either. This is the objection to the lodging-rooms used in the various precincts. Official charity, as a rule, hardens those who dole it out, and degrades its recipients.

There are thousands of noble-hearted women attached to our different churches, who, if they once thoroughly understood this subject, would not cease their efforts until societies were established and refuges opened. How could it be otherwise! How could they nestle their little ones down to sleep in warm, comfortable beds, and think of God's little ones freezing under their windows? How could they go to sleep themselves, and feel that some poor woman was probably wandering past their doorways, dying from want and exposure? We hope, before the chilling winds of next November remind us of the immensity of suffering the winter entails upon the poor, some philanthropic persons will have perfected this design, and have the refuges in working order. If such should be the case, the founders will find an ample reward in the words of Holy Writ, "He that hath mercy on the poor, lendeth to the Lord: and he will repay him."

If we could thus, by the adoption of every possible sanitary precaution, deprive our death-tables of all avoidable mortality; and by a proper religious influence elevate the moral character of the people, we should, in the first place, save thousands of lives, now necessary to develop our vast resources; and, secondly, our advance toward perfection in healthfulness and public virtues would go hand in hand with the gigantic strides being made in the adornment of our beautiful island. Our people would no longer seek other places in quest of health, as none more salubrious than New York could be found; and strangers, instead of saying, as is said of that most beautiful of Italy's fair cities, "See Naples, and die!" would exclaim, "Go to New York, and live!"

Wild Flowers.

The child, Mercedes, youngest of the three
Whom God has sent me for a mother's crown.
Brought me wild flowers, and with childish glee
Thus prattled on, as at my feet she cast them down:

"See, mamma! here are saucy flowers I found
Hiding behind the hedge, like boys at play.
Just peeping up their heads above the ground.
To watch if any one should chance to pass that way.

"'Aha!' said I, 'whose little flowers be you,
And from whose garden have you run away?
Your leaves are dripping with the morning dew.
Fie, naughty things! What, think you, will the gardener say?

"'Come, let me take you to my mamma's home;
And she will put you in a golden vase,
Where you shall stand and look around the room,
And see your pretty, rosy faces in the glass.'

"I took them softly up, and here they are.
And now, my mamma, I should like to know
Whose garden they have wandered from so far.
And why they did not stay at their own home to grow?"

I said: "My child, these flowers have never strayed
From any other home. Their place to grow
Is just behind the hedge, down in the glade.
Though no one may their beauty see or sweetness know."

Then she: "Why, mamma dear, how can that be?
What use for them to grow there all alone?
Why look so pretty if there's none to see?
Or why need they smell any sweeter than a stone?"

"No one on earth may see," I then replied—
"No one may know that flowers are blooming there
But God." Mercedes clapped her hands, and cried,
"God's flowers! Oh! keep them, mamma, in your book of prayer."

Methinks the child did choose a fitting place
To put those unnursed blossoms of the field:
Like them, our humble prayers with beauty grace
The heart's rough soil, and unto God their perfume yield.

Translated From The French.
Faith And Poetry Of The Bretons.

The bay of St. Malo is strewn here and there with rocks, upon which forts have been erected to protect the town by their cross fires. One of these, the Grand Bé, was formerly armed with cannon; but the fort is now abandoned, and only recognizable midst its ruins by the cross at the extremity of the beach, resting apparently on the blue sky above. To this cross all eyes are attracted, to this all steps turn, so soon as the breakers leave a shore of sand and granite for a pathway for the travellers.

After having ascended a rough and steep declivity, a naked and desert plateau is attained, where a few sheep find with difficulty a herb to browse upon; then a turn through a defile of rocks, and on the steepest point a stone and cross of granite. This is the tomb of Chateaubriand.

No longer a poetical tomb; leaning against the Old World, it contemplates the New; under it, the immense sea, and the vessels passing at its feet; no flowers, no verdure around it, no other noise than the incessantly moving sea, covering in its tempests this naked stone with the froth of its waves. Here he chose his last resting-place; and we wonder what thought inspired the wish that not even his name should be inscribed upon his tomb. Was it pride, or humility that actuated him? To me it appears that this humility and this pride were from the same source—a perfect disenchantment with the world. This man, who had proved so many projects abortive, so many ambitions misplaced; this traveller who had overrun the universe, visited the East, the cradle of the Old World, and the deserts of America, where was born the New; the poet who could count the cycles of his life by its revolutions, was overwhelmed at the end of it by a sadness that knew no repose. He, whose youth was preluded by Considerations on Revolutions, so comprehended life in his latter years as to write The Biography of the Reformer of La Trappe. The silence and solitude of the cloister were in harmony with the sadness of his soul. Having been charged with the most important missions, having accomplished the highest employments, and set to work the most skilful and powerful men, he retired from the whirling circle of the world, penetrated with the overpowering truth, how little man is worth, how little he knows, and how seldom he succeeds in what he undertakes. The usual source of joy—pride, the intoxication of the world—only provoked in him a smile; for all men he had the same contempt—did not even except himself—and knew well, according to the ancient proverb, that there is very little difference between one man and another. [Footnote 175]

[Footnote 175: Thucydides.]

Through humility, then, he cared not for any inscription on his tomb, not even a name. What mattered it who read it! Men were nothing, and he was one of them! But through pride also, he chose this naked stone. Travellers would come from all parts of the world, they would contemplate it and say, Chateaubriand! His name would be echoed by the waves that came from, and those that parted for, distant shores; and men were obliged to know where he lay.

Thus—ever-recurring instability of the human soul!—in him were united the most contrary sentiments—the disenchantment of glory, and the belief in the immortality of a name; the disdain of scepticism, and the thirst for applause; the impression of the Christian's humility, and an instinct of sovereign pride.

Here, however, we find truth: this cross, the sign of eternity on this stone marked by death, is the immutable testimony of the emptiness of human pride. Chateaubriand desired only a cross on his tomb, while Lamennais, his compatriot, rejected it: both obedient to the same preoccupation, in negation as in faith. The cross, dominating the tomb where the Breton poet reposes, is the symbol of the genius of his country, of Catholic Brittany.

Faith, in Brittany, has a particular character, allied to a poetry peculiar to Breton genius. In this country material objects speak; the very stones are animated, and the fields assume a voice to reveal the soul of man conversing with his God. This is not imagination; no one can be deceived in it. So soon as one enters Brittany, the physiognomy of the country changes, and the sign of this change is the cross. On all the roads, at all the public places, is raised the cross; of every epoch from the twelfth to the nineteenth century we find them, and of every form. There, simple crosses of granite raised on a few steps; here, crosses bearing on each side the image of Christ and the Virgin, rude sculptures in themselves, but always impressed with a sincere sentiment. The Bretons not only understand the tenderness of the Blessed Virgin, but they feel her grief; they share it with her, and express it with an energetic truth. Look at the picture of the Virgin holding her dead son on her knees, in the church of St. Michael at Quimperlé. It is a primitive painting by an unskilled hand, and one totally ignorant of the resources of art; the design of it is incorrect; yet what an expression of grief! The painter wished to portray the living suffering of the mother; the mouth is distorted, the eyes are fixed, the pupil seems alone indicated: yet this fixedness of look seizes upon you; you stop, you remain to examine it, you forget that it is a representation, and see the Virgin herself, immovable in her grief, with no power to express her sorrow; petrified, yet living.

At one side, leaning against the wall, is a statue of the Virgin, conceived with as contrary a sentiment as possible. She is all tenderness and delicacy, and has a leaning attitude, the head inclined, with the gentle look of the Mother who calls the sinner to her side. Her robe falls in numberless plaits, her mantle envelops her with a harmonious grace; for she is no longer the Mother of sorrow, but the sweet consoler of human kind, holding her Son in her arms, whom she presents to bless the earth, Notre Dame de Bot Scao, The Virgin of Good News.

The faith of sailors in the Blessed Virgin is well known, that of the Breton sailors particularly. At Brest, we look in vain for a museum of pictures. Brest is not a city of art; it breathes of war; the port, filled with large ships, the arsenal and its cannon, its shells, its gigantic anchors, the forts built on the rocks, the animated movement of the streets, where soldiers of all kinds go and come, and sailors constantly arriving from all parts of the world, give to it an air of intense reality—a character at once powerful and precise. Man has built on the rock his granite home, and we may believe it is immovably established.

But ascend the steps that lead from the lower to the upper town, and under a vault you will find four pictures appended to the wall. Here is the museum of Brest. Sea pictures dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, the departure of the vessel, women and children on the beach on their knees during a tempest, the vessel tossed by the waves, and the arms of the sailors extended to heaven; and on their return, the rescued sailors, bending their steps, with tapers in their hands, toward the chapel of Notre Dame; and underneath, touching legends, cries of the soul that implores, humbles itself, or renders thanks. Holy Virgin, save us! Holy Virgin, protect those who are now at sea! Man we see in his weakness, his aspirations, and his hopes—the true man; the rest was but the mask.

They seize every opportunity and use every pretext to testify their faith. At Saint Aubin d'Aubigné between Rennes and Saint Malo, you go along a tufted hedge; you see a cross cut of thorn—a cross which grows green in the spring, among the eglantines and roses. [Footnote 176]

[Footnote 176: At St. Vincent les Redon, a tree is cut in the form of the cross.]

You return to visit the land of Carnac—a land so pale and desolate, where the standing stones are squared by thousands, gigantic and silent sphinxes that for twenty centuries have kept their impenetrable secret—what is that cross that rises on an eminence? One that they have planted on an isolated ruin in the land—a cross on a Druidical altar, and before the army of stones which mark, perhaps, a cemetery of a great people.

Elsewhere, at the cross-way of a road near Beauport, a spring gushes out and flows among the rocks, forming both basin and fountain on the heaped-up stones; in an arched niche is enclosed a Virgin crowned with flowers; all around, the field morning-glory, the periwinkle, and the eglantine have peeped through the moss and herbs, and enlaced the rustic chapel with their flowery festoons, and fallen again on the infant Jesus. Opposite lie fields of green thorn-broom, and above their long, slender stalks appear the half-destroyed walls of an ancient abbey, roofless, opened to heaven, and silent. Through the blackened arches appears the blue sea, whose prolonged and incessant roaring fills the air.

In this Catholic country par excellence, all the churches are remarkable. There is no village, however small, of which the church does not form an interesting part; and here and there, as at Guérande and Vitré, we find the beautifully carved pulpits enclosed in the wall, from which the missionary fathers, on certain extraordinary occasions, speak to the people assembled in the square. At Carnac and Rennescleden we have the arched roofs so exquisitely painted; at Roscoff, Crozon, and elsewhere, medallions of stone and wood framing the altar with quaint gilded sculptures; then, again, we meet with a tabernacle formed for an architectural monument, a sort of palace in miniature, with its wings, pavilions, columns, domes, galleries, and statues, (as at Rosporden;) then an antique confessional greets us in a little chapel near Chateaulin, and a canopy sculptured in wood or even crystal, at Landivisiau. An odd ornament, which is found in only one church—that of Notre Dame de Comfort, on the way to the Bec du Raz—is called the wheel of good fortune, and is composed of a large wheel suspended from the roof of the church, and entirely surrounded by bells. On days of solemn feasts, for baptisms and weddings, the wheel is turned, and, agitating all the bells at once, forms a noisy chime, which times the march of the procession, and adds a joyous and silver-toned accompaniment to the voices of the young girls chanting the canticles to the Blessed Virgin. Finally, we meet with one of those trunks of trees, large squared pillars of oak, encircled with heavy bands of iron, and placed in the middle of the church, by the side of a catafalque of blackened wood, but sowed with whitened tears; the trunk and the coffin, emblems of the fragility of life, and the Christian principle above all others, charity.

The churches in the towns are truly chefs-d'oeuvres, the cloisters of Tréguier and Pont l'Abbé, for example, where the arcades are so light and so finely carved; or the bas-reliefs inside the portal of Sainte Croix, at Quimperlé, a vast page of sculptured stone, finished with the delicacy and richness of invention, the charming qualities of youth and of the Renaissance. Then, in all these churches, near the altar, you perceive immediately the painted statue of the parish saint, one of the Breton saints, not found elsewhere—Saint Cornély, Saint Guénolé. Saint Thromeur, Saint Yves especially. Saint Yves has the privilege of being represented in almost all the churches, even in those of which he is not patron; the remembrance of this great, good man, this wise priest, this incorruptible judge, is indelibly impressed on the heart of every Breton. Sometimes he is seen in his judge's robe, his cap on his head, and listening to two litigants, one in red velvet, embroidered in gold, with his grand wig, his silken stockings, and sword; the other, the poor peasant, all in rags, holes on his knees and his elbows, and naked feet in his wooden shoes. The great lord, with his cap on his head, and an air of pride, presents the saint a purse of gold; the peasant, with timid look and attitude, his head bent down, his cap in his hand, humbly awaits his sentence. He has nothing to give, but justice will not fail him. Saint Yves turns toward him with a gracious smile, and, handing him the judgment written on parchment, lets him know it is his. And thus the history of the middle ages: the church protecting the peasant, the weak against the powerful and the strong.

As to monuments, properly called, nowhere can we find more of these beautiful churches of the middle ages, testimonies of the piety, the science, and the taste of so glorious an epoch. Here, the Cathedral of Dol, of the best day of Gothic art—the thirteenth century—imposing by its massiveness, its grandeur, and the noble simplicity of its ornaments and the harmony of its proportions, the granite of whose towers, in the lapse of ages, is permeated with the air of the sea, has a color of rust, we might say built with iron; there, Tréguier and its exquisite wainscoting, benches, altars, stalls, pulpit in brilliant black oak, carved in such fine and delicate designs, with inexhaustible variety; not a baluster alike, enough models to furnish the entire sculpture of our time; and further on, Saint Pol de Leon and its spire of granite; daring and easy, a prodigy of equilibrium, immovable, girded with open galleries like graceful crowns, flinging to heaven its tiny sharpened bells; so beautifully carved, so aerial, the joy of Brittany, as well it may be, its legitimate pride; then Folgoat, a little unknown village north of Brest, lost at the extremity of the isle, and necessary to leave one's route to see it; but even here, two Breton princes, the Duke Jean III. and the Duchess Anne, have constructed a royal church accumulating all that Gothic art in its richest ornamentation, united to the most ingenious caprices of the Renaissance, could have imagined of delicacy and brightness; portraits sculptured, statues of the finest style reflecting their antiquity, a richly Gothic and carved choir, and a gallery—one of those graceful and original monuments of Catholicism so seldom met with—of lace-work, where trefoils, roses, and foliage are carved in indestructible blue granite. The hammer of the Revolution has only knocked off small pieces of these beautifully carved stones. They resisted the passions of men, as they have defied the action of time.

With the bells, of such varied forms, and the vessels for holy water, we will conclude.

These bells are of every style—of the Renaissance, the Roche-Maurice-les-Landerneau, of Landivisiau, of Ploaré, of Pontcroix, and of Roscoff. Many are hung with smaller and lighter bells and ornamented with two-story balustrades, like the minarets of the East; then the coverings, spires as they are called, are like that of Tréguier, open, that the winds of the sea may pass through them, and adorned with crosses, roses, little windows, cross-bars, and stars like the cap of a magician.

The vessels for holy water also express the character of the age. At Dinan, in a church of the twelfth century, an enormous massive tub is supported by the large iron gauntlets of four chevaliers; the old crusader dress, armed cap-a-pie in the service of Christ. In a church of the fifteenth century, at Quimper, is one of an entirely opposite character—a small column, around which a vine is entwined, and above an angel, who, with wings extended, appears as if it had descended from heaven to alight upon the consecrated cup. Again, and as if inspired by a still more Christian sentiment, we find the exterior vessels for holy water, so common everywhere in Brittany, of which the most remarkable are at Landivisiau, at Morlaix, and Quimperlé. The interior ones seem only accessories; the exterior, isolated before the door, have a more precise signification: they solicit the first impulse of the soul; the Christian, in stretching out his hand toward the blessed vase, pauses, and prepares his heart for the coming devotion.

How well these Breton architects have understood religion! These exterior vases are living monuments, little pulpits, with their emblems, symbols, and heads of angels enveloped in their wings. Their canopies, prominent, sculptured, and under them, standing and always smiling, our blessed Mother, who seems to invite the faithful to enter the house of prayer. And prayer, as some one has said, is the fortress of life. The Breton people believe and pray: a hidden power is theirs—religion; its effectiveness attesting not only its existence, but its life.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

Abbot Pastor said: He who teacheth something and doth it not himself, is like unto a well which filleth and cleanseth all who come to it, but is unable to cleanse itself of filth and impurities.

A brother asked Abbot Pastor the meaning of the words: He who is angry with his brother without cause. He answered: If in all cases where thy brother wisheth to put thee down thou art angry with him, even though thou pluck out thy right eye and cast it from thee, thy anger is without cause. If however, any one desireth to separate thee from God, then mayest thou be angry.

Abbot Pastor said: Malice never driveth away malice; but, if anyone shall have done thee an injury, heap benefits upon him, so that by thy good works thou destroy his malice.

A brother came to Abbot Pastor, and said: Many thoughts enter my mind, and I am in great danger from them. Then the old man sent him out into the open air, and said: Spread out thy garment and catch the wind. But he answered that he could not. If thou canst not do this, replied the old man, neither canst thou put a stop to these thoughts; but it is thy duty to resist them.

Abbot Pastor said: Experiments are useful, for by them men become more perfect.

New Publications

Discussions in Theology.
By Thomas H. Skinner,
Professor in the Union Theological Seminary.
New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 770 Broadway.

Hints on the Formation of Religious Opinions.
Addressed especially to young men and women of
Christian education.
By Rev. Ray Palmer, D.D.,
Pastor of the First Congregational church,
Albany. Same publisher.

These two volumes are very much alike in their general scope and character. Both are written in a calm, philosophical style, and with the praiseworthy view of presenting the claims of the Christian religion on the reason and conscience of men, combating scepticism, and removing difficulties and objections derived from the infidel literature of the day. Professor Skinner begins with a very good essay on miracles as the basis of a reasonable, historical belief in the teaching which they authenticate, and then proceeds to develop his own views respecting certain special topics which he can assume will be admitted by his particular audience to be contained in that teaching. These relate chiefly to the mode by which fallen man may obtain restoration to the divine favor through the Redeemer of our race. The author's object is to show that this mode, as explained by himself, exhibits the attributes of God in a manner consonant to the dictates of reason and the truths of natural theology, and is one by which any sincere, well-intentioned person can make sure of obtaining grace from God, pardon and eternal life. The author's view is that of the new school of Calvinists, which is a great improvement on that of the old school in a moral, though not in a logical, sense. Such preaching and writing as that of Professor Skinner must have a good influence on those who still believe in Christianity and know no other form of it than the Presbyterian. It puts forward the goodness and mercy of God, and encourages the sinner to hope for grace and pardon, if he will be diligent in prayer, meditation, and other pious exercises, and this appears to have been the practical end proposed to himself by the author in this volume. Dr. Palmer's essays are more elaborate and consecutive in their character, and aim more immediately at satisfying the intelligence. He first portrays in a clear and impressive manner the evils of scepticism, and then proceeds to exhibit the evidence of the truths of natural theology and of the fact of a divine revelation, which is also accomplished with a considerable degree of ability and force. The result at which he aims is to convince his readers that they are morally bound to recognize Christianity as true, and to form some definite opinions as to its real meaning, which may serve them as a practical rule and guide for attaining their eternal destiny. The capital defect in his argument is, that he reduces the evidence of the being of God to mere probability, thus leaving the mind where Kant left it, in a state of scientific scepticism with no better basis of certainty than the practical reason. Of course, then, he has nothing more to propose under the name of Christian doctrines than probable opinions. No doubt, it is obligatory on all to act upon opinions which are solidly probable in regard to the momentous interests of the soul, where there are no other equal probabilities to balance them, and no greater certainty is attainable. We deny, however, emphatically that man is left in this state by the Christian revelation. The being of God is a metaphysical certainty. The fact of revelation is a moral certainty, reducible in the last analysis to a certainty which is metaphysical and sufficient to produce an absolute assent of the mind without any fear of the contrary. The articles of faith proposed by the revelation of God ought to have the same certainty, since it is necessary to believe them without doubting. Our respected authors cannot propose a reasonable motive for believing all the doctrines of their sect or school without any doubt, but can only propose opinions more or less probable, or even directly contrary to reason. We do not think, therefore, that they will be able to satisfy the reason of any person who thinks logically that their theories of Christianity are true and complete. The most they can do is to breed an anxious desire to find out with certainty what Christianity is and to attain to a rational faith.

Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna.
By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.,
President of St. Mary's College, Oscott.
For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

This is a valuable contribution to Catholic literature, and presents a subject of interest not only to Catholics, but to the public at large; for great public facts are always of interest, whatever may be our opinion in regard to their significance. A clear and full account is given in this book of the principal facts connected with the origin of some of the sanctuaries of the Madonna in Europe, particularly of the Holy House of Loreto and the recently established pilgrimage of La Salette in France. We do not see how any one can read it and resist the conviction that God has, by his own finger, established and maintained the devotion of the faithful at these holy places. It is easy enough to cry superstition, and to call everything supernatural superstitious. But the evidence of facts speaks for itself, and we commend this book to the candid reader, confident of his favorable judgment in spite of all preconceived opinions, as able to speak for itself. We have, moreover, found it most attractive, and have read it from beginning to end with unflagging interest. It is calculated to quicken the faith of the dumb Christian, open his eyes to the unseen world, and fill his heart with desire for virtue and the love of God, and, as well, to produce in the mind of the careless a deeper conviction of the truth of spiritual things, which may make him set less value on the present, and prize more highly the world to come. We hope this book may attract attention and be widely circulated.

Notes on the Rubrics of the Roman Ritual:
Regarding the Sacraments in general.
Baptism, the Eucharist, and Extreme Unction.
By Rev. James O'Kane, Senior Dean, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.
New York: The Catholic Publication House.
1 vol. crown 8vo, pp. 527. 1868.

This is one of the most excellent commentaries upon the Ritual that has come under our notice. The reverend author has for several years delivered lectures upon the Rubrics to the senior class of theological students in Maynooth, and the substance of these lectures is to be found in the present volume. That he is eminently qualified for such a difficult task, is apparent from the thoroughly practical as well as theoretical knowledge he displays in treating of the administration of the sacraments.

Priests on the mission will find the book one of the most useful works for reference on the subjects treated of which can be found in the English language.

It has been examined by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and received its approbation, and can, therefore, be consulted and followed with confidence as good authority.

Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia for 1867.

This valuable work appears to receive more care and attention each year. The present volume is of unusual importance on account of the political events in our own country and elsewhere, bearing on the ultimate destiny of the Christian world, which are recorded in its pages. It contains, also, a very fair statement of the history and present condition of the Pope's temporal dominion, and of the principal events in the history of the Catholic Church during the year. In the article on the "Roman Catholic Church," it is incorrectly stated that the Council of Florence is by some regarded as oecumenical. It is universally regarded as oecumenical, and was one of the most important councils ever held in the church. The Patriarch of Constantinople, the Greek Emperor, the representatives of the other Eastern patriarchs and of the Russian Church, and a number of other Eastern prelates were present, and discussed all their causes of difference with the Roman Church during thirteen months, after which they signed the Act of Union, and united in a solemn definition of the supremacy of the Pope.

The Council of Basle is enumerated among the certain oecumenical councils, although all its acts from the twenty-fifth session have been condemned, and none of those of the prior sessions approved, by the Holy See. Although a few Galilean writers have maintained that this council was oecumenical during its earlier sessions, their opinion is generally rejected and is of no weight.

Red Cross; or, Young America in England and Wales.
By Oliver Optic.
Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This volume, the third of the series published under the title of Young America Abroad, continues and concludes the travels and adventures of the naval cadets on British soil and in British waters. London, Liverpool, Manchester, the Isle of Wight, the Lake District, Snowdon, the Menai Straits, etc., are visited, affording an opportunity for the introduction of a great deal of miscellaneous information regarding the physical geography and history of many interesting localities. So far the book is unexceptionable. The adventures of the students, however, are, in Oliver Optic's usual style, exaggerated to the very verge of credibility; and though they will doubtless be relished by the class for which they are written, we no less decidedly think that, as mental food for youth, the selection is not the most judicious, and that the author could very easily, with equal credit to himself and greater benefit to his juvenile readers, serve up something else more nutritious, if less palatable, or not so highly seasoned. As regards the students themselves, it seems to us, also, that the author has not yet hit upon the golden mean: the good boys are almost too good, the bad equally untrue to nature. Our experience with boys—and it is by no means slight or superficial—tends to prove that with those who, from an indisposition to submit to an "iron rule," are commonly known as "wild," such impatience of restraint generally springs from exuberant animal spirits, and is seldom, if ever, met with in connection with meanness, much less vice. Per contra, the greatest sycophants are, as a rule, the meanest and most depraved.

Chaudron's New Fourth Reader.
On an Original Plan.
By A. De V. Chaudron.
Mobile: W. G. Clark & Co. Pp. 328. 1867.

Exteriorly, this book presents a by no means pleasing appearance; hence, the greater our surprise, and, we may add, our pleasure, at the variety and excellence of its contents, in which respect it is nowise inferior to any of those in use in our public schools. While we cannot expect for Mrs. Chaudron's Series of Readers an extended circulation in this city, in view of so many and generally deserving rivals already firmly established amongst us, we do with confidence recommend them, if in their general features they resemble this, the only one of the series submitted to us.

Imitation of Christ
Spiritual Combat
Treatise on Prayer.
Boston: P. Donahoe. Pp. 816. 1868.

Decidedly opposed to small type in books of a religious or educational character, we can cheerfully overlook its use in this instance, giving us, as it does, complete in one volume and in bulk not exceeding the average size of prayer-books, three such admirable devotional works.

Irish Homes and Irish Hearts.
By Fanny Taylor, author of Eastern Hospitals, Tyborne, Religious Orders, etc., etc.
Boston: Patrick Donahoe. Pp. xi. 215.

The original work, of which this volume is a very neat reprint, was favorably mentioned in The Catholic World for September, 1867. Hence we need not enter into details. It is enough to say that the author, leaving the beaten track of ordinary tourists, devoted herself to the visitation and inspection of the various charitable and religious institutions of Ireland, the number and excellence of which amply vindicate "the warmth of Irish hearts and the depth of Irish faith." This volume gives the result of her examination. It unfolds not a new, but to many an unexpected, phase of Irish character, and will well repay a perusal, from which few can rise without being benefited thereby.

Choice of a State of Life.
By Father C. G. Rossignoli, S. J.
Translated from the French,
1 vol. 16mo, pp. 252.
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1868.

This is a well-reasoned little treatise on vocations, or the choice of a state of life, an important matter too little thought of in our day, when material things have the upper hand, and spiritual things are made of so little account. Many, no doubt, fitted by their talents and called by an interior voice to the priesthood or the religious state, neglect the call; and others again, quite unfit, thrust themselves forward, allured by some prospect of worldly advancement. This little book clearly exposes the motives which should govern us in the choice of a state of life. If read in a calm and undisturbed state of mind, we do not doubt it will do a great deal of good, and induce many to embrace the better part which shall not be taken away from them.

Margaret: A Story of Life in a Prairie Home.
By Lyndon.
New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1868.

A pleasantly told story of everyday life. The interest in the narrative is well sustained throughout; the incidents natural, yet effectively introduced; and the characters strongly marked and sufficiently diversified. "Life in a prairie home," however, if here faithfully described, differs materially from what it is generally supposed to be. The incidents are such as to be equally possible in any village in any one of the original thirteen states.

Elinor Johnston: Founded on Facts;
Maurice and Genevieve, or The Orphan Twins of Beauce.
Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. Pp. 136.

Two charming stories for children, tastefully got up, if we except an occasional inequality in the pages and carelessness in typography, which we hope to see avoided in future volumes. There is no reason why books intended for children should not be as creditable in appearance as those for adults. That this can be done is proved by the beautifully uniform series just issued by the Catholic Publication Society.

Books Received.

From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore:

The First-Class Book of History, designed for pupils commencing the study of history, with questions; adapted to the use of academies and schools.
By M. J. Kerney, A.M., author of Compendium of Ancient and Modern History, Columbian Arithmetic, etc., etc., etc. Twenty-second revised edition. Enlarged by the addition of Lessons in Ancient History,
1 vol. 16mo, pp. 335.

From P. O'Shea, New York:

O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library.
First series. 12 vols., illustrated.

The Catholic World.

Vol. VII., No. 41.—August, 1868.

A New Face On An Old Question.

A few months ago I described a visit which I had recently paid to a friend of mine in the country, and repeated a little of the conversation we then had together upon subjects especially interesting to Catholics. [Footnote 177]

[Footnote 177: See The Catholic World, March, 1868; article, "Canada Thistles."]

I was so well pleased with what I saw and heard on that occasion that I resolved to spend a few more days with him; and last month, as soon as the warm weather set in, I presented myself one evening at his hospitable door, valise in hand, and was soon comfortably installed as a guest. If I found his house an embodiment of domestic comfort during the winter, it was still more delightful, now that the lawn and meadows wore the brilliant green of early summer, and the prairie-roses, climbing over the great, roomy piazza, shook down perfume into the open windows, and drew around the place the ceaseless song of bees and the whir of the restless little humming-bird. The library which had charmed me so much when the blazing wood-fire shed a ruddy glow of comfort over the bookshelves and the big writing-table, and the tempting arm-chairs, was a thousand times more attractive, now that green branches and bunches of roses filled the old-fashioned fire-place, and windows, open to the floor, let in the breath of new-mown hay, while creepers and honeysuckles kept off the glare of the sun, and waved gently in and out with the south-west breeze. Here we used to sit and chat on warm afternoons, and our conversation generally turned upon the religious topics in which we were both so much interested. One day we were talking about the great improvement of late in the style of discussion on the Catholic question. "We don't hear so much of the old slanders," said my friend, "but there is rather an inquiry into the reasons of our success and the best methods to meet us. Whenever that inquiry is conducted honestly and thoroughly, it is found that the only way to meet us is, to come over boldly to our side and fight under our banner. As an illustration of what I have said," continued he, picking up a pamphlet from the table, "take this sermon on 'Christ and the Common People,' by the Rev. Mr. Hinsdale, a Protestant clergyman, of Detroit. He states the subject of his discourse boldly enough: 'We start,' he says, 'with the confessed failure of Protestantism to control spiritually the lives, and to mould religiously the characters, of the millions. What are the reasons?' He declares that Protestantism has scarcely won a foot of ground from Romanism in more than two hundred years. 'Geographically, it is where it was at the close of the century in which Luther died. Neither is Protestantism stronger religiously or politically than it was in the seventeenth century; some deny that it is as strong' Nor can it be claimed that it is now making any material gains in any of these directions.' Again: 'In the Protestant countries, no ground has been wrested from false religion or irreligion within a hundred years;' and in the principal American cities the Protestant denominations are unquestionably losing ground. There is good authority for stating that in Cincinnati, for instance, the communicants in the Protestant churches are fewer by two thousand than they were twenty years ago; yet the population of the city has increased during the interval by something like a hundred thousand. Well, Mr. Hinsdale being, as I should judge, a gentleman of common sense and honesty, does not try to relieve his mind from the pressure of these disagreeable facts by cursing the Catholics, but sets himself to work to find out the reasons for the greater prosperity of our church. I need not read them to you; for of course the great reason of all—the assistance of Heaven—he does not perceive; but he makes some significant admissions. He tells his people that Catholicism is the especial religion of the poor, and that Protestantism is restricting itself daily more and more closely to the rich; and he quotes a saying of Theodore Parker's: 'If the poor forsake a church, it is because the church forsook God long before.' I am a Protestant of the Protestants,' Mr. Hinsdale adds, 'but have no hesitation in affirming that in some particulars we should stand rebuked before Romanists this hour; none in declaring that in some respects the Romish priest understands the methods of Christ better than the evangelical preacher.' Now, when the alarm of Protestants at the increase of our churches takes such a form as this, I believe that good results must flow from it."

"No doubt you are right," said I; "but I am afraid few of the anti-popery preachers are like this gentleman of Detroit. Here, for example, is an address, delivered at the last anniversary of the American and Foreign Christian Union, by the Rev. Dr. Talmadge, of Philadelphia. He begins with the admission that the cause of popery is still flourishing, 'although in the attempt to destroy it there has been expended enough ink, enough voice, enough genius, enough money, enough ecclesiastical thunder, to have torn off all the cassocks, and to have extinguished all the wax candles, and to have poured out all the holy water, and to have rent open all the convents, and to have turned the Vatican into a Reformed Dutch church, and the convocation of cardinals into an old-fashioned prayer-meeting, and to have immersed the pope, and sent him forth as a colporteur of the American and Foreign Christian Union. But somehow there has been a great waste of effort. The plain fact is,' he continues, 'that Romanism has to-day, in the United States, tenfold more power than when we first began to bombard it.' And the moral he draws from this survey of the situation is, that the Protestants had better 'change their style of warfare,' and introduce into the fight the principle of holy love, and the example of charity and devotion. Nothing could be more sensible than this remark of his: 'Bitter denunciation on the part of good but mistaken men never pulled down one Roman Catholic church, but has built five hundred. There is only one way to make a man give up his religion, and that is by showing him a better.' Brave words, you say, and so they are. Yet this very sermon is full of just the sort of bitter denunciation which the preacher denounces. The whole address is a condemnation of the speaker himself—one of the finest pieces of unconscious satire I ever read. I don't believe The Observer itself could do the raw-head and bloody-bones business better than Dr. Talmadge does it."

"Never mind. Get these people to admit the principle of honest and gentlemanly dealing in religious controversy, and you may leave their practice to reform itself. For one man who was impressed by Dr. Talmadge's swelling invectives, I make little doubt that there were five who carried away in their hearts his advice to be charitable, courteous, and just. The English Nonconformist preacher, Newman Hall, who travelled through the United States recently, told his congregation on his return home that one of the greatest dangers of Protestantism nowadays was injustice toward Roman Catholics. I am afraid that his advice was not much relished in England, for you know injustice to Catholics is one of the pet foibles of Englishmen; but it is not so bad here. The American people are naturally fond of fair play. You have only to convince them that a certain course of conduct is unjust, and they will change it of their own accord."

"Do you mean to say, then, that you believe reason and logic are henceforth to supersede violence and slander in the discussion of the Catholic problem?"

"Not entirely, of course. But I believe that falsehoods are rapidly losing their efficacy in polemics, and that Protestants recognize this fact and are preparing to adapt themselves to the altered conditions of the conflict. And I do not mean to insinuate that as a class they do this merely from policy. Most of them probably used to believe the old standard lies; at least, they did not disbelieve them. They repeated them by rote, because they had been brought up to do so, and they never thought of stopping to inquire into their authority. Now that the slanders have ceased to serve a purpose, it is naturally easier to convince those who used to profit by them that they are slanders. What I mean to say is, that the tendency of our time is toward fairness and good sense in religious disputes. You and I, for example, are quite young enough to remember when 'Romanism' was popularly regarded as an unknown horror, no more to be tolerated than the plague or the yellow fever. It was not thought to be a question open for debate. A Protestant would no more have dreamed of examining the merits of popery than the merits of hydrophobia. But now it is a very common thing for our adversaries to admit that we have done wonderful service to humanity in our day; that in some particulars we have done and are still doing more than any other denomination; only we belong to a past age and ought now to give way to fresher organizations. I remember a rather striking sermon which I read in a Detroit newspaper, the other day, on the 'irrepressible conflict' between Catholicism and Liberalism, by the Rev. Mr. Mumford, a Unitarian clergyman. The greater part of the discourse was as illiberal as anything could be. Mr. Mumford saw in the Catholic Church a tremendous engine of oppression, and thought it was scheming to get control of the negroes in the Southern States, and through them to direct the politics of the whole country—"

"He saw no danger in the great influence which Methodism has acquired over the colored people, did he?"

"No; and he forgot to mention that the Catholic Church is almost the only one in America which has never been tainted by the intrusion of politics. Well, I was going on to say that, with all Mr. Mumford's prejudices and absurdities, he had the honesty to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is really entitled to the gratitude of mankind, and declared that he was glad it had secured some foothold in America, 'to act as a restraint upon the intolerance of the Protestant churches.'"

"I am afraid that you rather exaggerate the importance of admissions like these. They are so often made merely for rhetorical effect! They are little patches of light artfully thrown into the picture to heighten the effect of the shadows."

"I know that I don't refer to them as proofs of a willingness to examine the nature and grounds of Catholic doctrine, though I believe that there is much more of such willingness than there used to be, but as an evidence that a spirit of fairness and good-breeding is beginning to prevail in religious controversy; and from that spirit I cannot but expect good results."

"So far I have no doubt you are right; and one of the good results, it seems to me, must be the gradual extinction (or possibly the reform) of denominational newspapers of the old bludgeon-school. The Observer must go out of fashion whenever reason comes in. There will be no room for the religious brawlers when those who differ in creed learn to talk over their differences in a common-sense way. Don't you think there is a change in the tone of the press already?"

"The secular press certainly has improved wonderfully in its treatment of Catholics. About the religious periodicals I am not so sure: some of them are tamer than they were formerly, but the old stand-bys lash their tails as furiously as ever, and the less they are heeded the louder they roar. But that is only natural. You see the same thing at the theatres. When a play ceases to draw very well, the single combats become doubly fierce and the red-fire is frequent. The violence of the denominational organs must not be taken as an evidence of the sentiment of society. If they really led the opinions of their readers, we should have an anti-Catholic crusade every year. I wonder if you have noticed, however, that some of the Protestant religious papers which have usually been mild in their tone have been roused of late to an unaccustomed bitterness against us?"

"Yes, and I hardly know how to account for it."

"I think the explanation is this. The calm discussion of Catholic questions, as we said before, must logically lead to the discovery of Catholic truth. There are Protestant writers who see this and do not want to see it. They perceive whither the current is bearing them, and they struggle against it. They rail at the church by way of protest against the growth of an unwelcome, dimly foreseen conviction, as an encouragement to their tottering unbelief, just as boys whistle to keep up their courage. Have you ever seen a dying sinner try to fight off death? It is in some such hopeless effort as his that The Liberal Christian and a few other journals are now engaged. I do not say that they understand this themselves. I do not charge them with absolutely resisting the progress of conviction, or, to speak more exactly, the resistance is instinctive rather than voluntary; but they feel or suspect, perhaps without fully comprehending, that, if they keep on as they are going, they must come pretty soon to the Catholic Church, and that provokes them. The Liberal Christian, you know, is edited by Dr. Bellows, an accomplished gentleman, who was thought some years ago to exhibit a decided leaning toward the church. I am not prepared to say whether this supposition was correct or not; but it is certain that he saw more clearly and exposed more boldly the inherent defects and logical tendencies of Protestantism than any other Protestant I can remember, and in one of his published sermons he declared that Unitarians (his own sect) had more sympathy with Catholicism than with any other form of religion. It might seem strange to find him among the foremost revilers of that very Catholicism; but my theory explains it. The hostility which glistens in his letters and runs mad, sometimes, in the miscellaneous columns of his paper, is the revolt of his Protestantism against the progress of unwelcome ideas—an effort of his unregenerate nature, so to speak, to throw off something which does not agree with it. Ah! how many men have trod in the same path he is now following, and have been led by it to the bitter waters of disappointment! He saw the fatal gulf into which the Protestant bodies were plunging. He felt that hunger of the spirit which nothing but the church of God ever satisfies. He raised a cry for help, and when he found that there was no help except from the Holy Catholic Church, he turned his back upon her, and bound himself down once more with the narrow bonds of what is called Unitarian 'liberalism.' And now, of course, he misses no opportunity of declaring his detestation of the succor which he has refused. He has failed in his aspirations after a mock church, and naturally he vents his disappointment on the real one. He fancies that he is moved by principle, when he is really instigated by pique. He imagines that he is an earnest, honest seeker after an answer to what he well terms 'the dumb wants of the religious times,' when he is—but I have no business to judge his motives. That is God's affair. We must presume that he is courageous and sincere, and that whenever he finds the right road he will boldly walk in it. Nine years ago, Dr. Bellows delivered an address before the alumni of the Harvard Divinity School, on 'The Suspense of Faith,' which was generally supposed to indicate his wish to engraft a ritual and a priesthood upon the Unitarian denomination, bringing it perhaps nearer to Episcopalianism than to any other system of worship. There was no such thought in his mind, I am sure; though his sentiments, had they been acted upon, might have led many men through Episcopalianism into the Catholic Church. I will not weary you with the whole of it; but let me read a few lines which have a special application to what we have been saying. He is trying to account for the fact that Unitarianism is in a posture of pause and self-distrust and he says: 'If, with logical desperation, we ultimate the tendencies of Protestantism, and allow even the malice of its enemies to flash light upon their direction, we may see that the sufficiency of the Scriptures turns out to be the self-sufficiency of man, and the right of private judgment an absolute independence of Bible or church. No creed but the Scriptures, practically abolishes all Scriptures but those on the human heart; nothing between a man's conscience and his God, vacates the church; and with the church, the Holy Ghost, whose function is usurped by private reason: the church lapses into what are called religious institutions, these into Congregationalism, and Congregationalism into individualism—and the logical end is the abandonment of the church as an independent institution, the denial of Christianity as a supernatural revelation, and the extinction of worship as a separate interest. There is no pretence that Protestantism, as a body, has reached this, or intends this, or would not honestly and earnestly repudiate it; but that its most logical product is at this point, it is not easy to deny. Nay, that these are the tendencies of Protestantism is very apparent.' When he comes to speak of Unitarianism as the representative and most logical exponent of Protestantism, he expresses himself in a still more remarkable way. Religion, he thinks, like everything else in the world, has been constantly making progress, and Unitarianism has always been in the van. Now this progress seemed to have reached its limit; there is a pause, a partial recoil, in some cases a turning back to the formalism and ritual worship of Rome, in others a headlong rush into the abyss of pure rationalism. In fact, Dr. Bellows believes that to create an equilibrium in the relations between God and man, two opposing forces are in operation—a centrifugal force, which drives man away from submission to divine authority, that he may develop his own liberty and functions of the will, and a centripetal force, which leads him to worship and obedience. These are represented respectively by Protestantism and Catholicism, and he seems to think them destined to alternate—perhaps for all time, though about this his meaning is not very clear. 'Is it not plain,' he says, 'that, as Protestants of the Protestants, we are at the apogee of our orbit; that in us the centrifugal epoch of humanity has, for this swing of the pendulum at least, reached its bound? For one cycle we have come, I think, nearly to the end of our self-directing, self-asserting, self-developing, self-culturing faculties; to the end of our honest interest in this necessary alternate movement.'"

"That means, if it means anything that Protestantism has done its work, at least for the present age; that it has accomplished all it can; and there is nothing left for man but a return to the centripetal force, or to the Catholic Church."

"Exactly: that would be the logical complement of the position he assumed in the curious discourse from which I have been quoting; but the misery is that he had not the courage to be logical. Ah! how well I remember the impression produced at the time by that sad, sad cry of weariness and disappointment which went up from his pulpit when he perceived that the toil, and speculation, and uneasiness of years had brought him to no goal; that he had developed man's faculties without finding a use for them; that he had achieved an intellectual freedom without knowing what to do with it; that, as he well expressed it himself, 'there was no more road in the direction he had been going.' Many, as we have seen, when they reached that point on their journey whence this whole dismal prospect was visible, turned back to the church which their fathers had forsaken, and there found peace; and Dr. Bellows had stated so boldly the miseries of his own situation that it was no wonder people thought he too would follow that course. But he set himself about finding a new road, imagining a new church which was to arise at no distant day, and combine the most conservative of liturgies with the most radical of creeds. It was to be constituted on strictly centripetal principles. Speculation having proved empty, worship was to be essayed as a change. Doubt being but sorry fare for a hungry soul, there was to be a good deal of faith, and preaching not being a gift of all men, place was to be made for prayer. What that church was to be, how it was to arise, and when it was to make its appearance, he did not pretend to say. But it must come soon, because 'the yearning for a settled and externalized faith' was too strong to be left unsatisfied. It was to be, I must suppose, a mingling of the revelations of our Saviour with the dreams of Luther, Calvin, Fox, and Swedenborg; because, as Dr. Bellows says in one of his lectures, 'the religious man who has no vacillations in his views, who is not sometimes inclined to Calvinism, sometimes to Rationalism, sometimes to Catholicism, sometimes to Quakerism, has an imperfect activity, a dull imagination, and a timid love of truth; for all these faiths have embodied great and interesting spiritual facts which the free and earnest explorer will encounter in his own experience, and find more vividly portrayed in the history of these sects than in himself.' It was to possess a fixed creed, but nobody was expected to believe in it, for 'inconsistencies of opinion' are to be expected of everybody, and doubt, fear, and scepticism are actually desirable, provided they are 'the work of one's own mental and spiritual activity, and not of mere passive acquiescence in the forces that one encounters from without.' It was to be a true church, of course, yet a false church also; because Dr. Bellows declares that 'truth is too large to be surrounded by any one man or any one party,' and there are always two great parties in religion as there are in politics, 'and each has part of the truth in its keeping;' so that, of course, neither can be wholly right. He wanted his church to be a historical church, for Christianity is a historical religion, and 'a faith stripped of historic reality, disunited from its original facts and persons, does not promise to live and work in the human heart and life.' He seemed to have forgotten that history is the growth of time, and cannot be conferred upon a new-born infant. The future church must have rites and ceremonies, for without them religion hardly 'touches our daily habits and ordinary career,' and is, like Unitarianism, 'an unhoused, unnatural, and disembodied faith.' It must be a visible church, yet without a priesthood; a divinely instituted church, yet without authority; receiving its doctrines by divine revelations, yet only true in part; eternal, yet changeable, I am not surprised that Dr. Bellows has not yet found it."

"Surely he never uttered any such extraordinary farrago as you have been putting into his mouth?"

"Not in those words, of course, nor with that collocation of thoughts; but all that I have said you will find either in his Suspense of Faith, or in the volume of sermons published under the title of Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine, (New York, 1860.) I have represented, as fairly as possible, the vagueness of his aspirations and the inconsistency of his principles. It is only clear that he wanted to be a Protestant and a Catholic at the same time. He was shocked at the results of his own centripetalism, and he longed for a visible church, with a tangible creed and a set form of worship; only he wanted to make the church himself; not to be the founder of a new sect—he disclaimed that, and was unwilling even to change the form of service in his own congregation—but to dream about it, to speculate upon what it ought to be, to mould and influence opinion, until, by a seemingly spontaneous movement, the new church should arise from the midst of the people. Poor man! He sees, by this time, that nobody feels the want of this new church, and nobody believes in it; and he hates the true church, partly because it is a continual reproach to him, bringing to mind a duty unfulfilled and a happiness unappreciated, and partly because it continually revives his disappointment."

"I have serious doubts, however, whether Dr. Bellows ever comprehended the beauty of the Catholic religion half so well as many people supposed that he did. Read his books with a little care, and you will see that he never took but the most superficial view of religion: he never got at the core of it. Religion to him—as to how many others!—was a thin philosophy which amused his intellect, a sentimental poetry which tickled his aesthetic instincts; it was not a life. Of that vital Christianity which comprehends the whole relationship between God and man, which is both a creed, a worship, and the very essence of devout life, his heart seems to have been void."

"Yes, he says something almost equivalent to this in his sermon on 'Spiritual Discernment.'[Footnote 178]

[Footnote 178: Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine.]

'All the triumphs of Protestantism,' he declares, 'the universal improvement of private and public morality, of public education, respect for the individual, have grown out of the increasing care to keep the church and the world apart—religion and other interests distinct subjects of thought and attention.' And the word 'world' here he does not use in its bad sense, but merely as synonymous with secular affairs. Again he says, that 'the Catholic Church succeeded wonderfully in blending life and religion together, faith and daily usage, pleasure and worship, philosophy and the Gospel;' and this, he thinks, was its great fault, while the great merit of Protestantism was, that it carefully separated what the church had so carefully melted together. That gives you the real old Puritan idea of piety—a something to be put on at stated times, and then put off again, like the long faces which old-fashioned Protestants pull for Sunday wear; to have no intimate connection with daily life, but to be kept carefully apart, like the best coat which our ancestors used to lay by in lavender leaves, to be worn on days of ceremony. What is the good of a religion which does not blend with work-a-day life? of a faith which is not felt in daily usage? of a worship which must be kept apart from our pleasures, from our business, from any of our honest pursuits? Why, the very beauty of religion is, that it shall be in man's heart at all times and in all places. If it cannot accompany us everywhere, if it can only live in the artificial atmosphere of Sunday meetings, it is not worth having. The danger against which we have most to guard is not, Dr. Bellows thinks, that of forgetting our religion, but that of growing too familiar with it. His God is an awful rather than a loving God, and our sin against him is not that we go so far away from him, but that we bring him so near to us. In effect he tells us to fetch out our piety once a week or so, on stated occasions, but not to let it interfere with our daily walk and conversation, for that would be sacrilege."

"All this shows, as you say, that he has no comprehension as yet of the true nature of religion; and shall I tell you why he is so slow to acquire it? I believe that he is not really in sympathy with Christianity."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh! he is nominally a Christian, of course. He would be horrified if you told him he was not. But he has no sympathy with the religion of Christ. Our Saviour, in his opinion, was only the expounder of a system of ethics, and, to tell the truth, it is not clear to me wherein the Christ of Unitarianism is essentially superior to Socrates or Benjamin Franklin. The worship of our Lord Dr. Bellows emphatically denounces as rank 'idolatry.' We may only reverence him as a creature specially favored by the Almighty, and a teacher to whose word we owe the most profound respect. Take away from your religious system the idea of God in the person of his divine Son perpetually present with the faithful, and helping them to bear the burdens of humanity which he himself has borne, and it is but a cold, cheerless, fallacious belief which is left you. It is no longer religion; it is only a false philosophy. Devotion vanishes; faith, hope, and love are exchanged for a code of rules of behavior; and God withdraws from the world into the impenetrable mystery of the heavens, where the voice of prayer indeed may reach him, but his presence is never felt by man, and his love never fills the heart. He is no longer the dear Lord of the Christian saints, but the Allah of the Moslems."

"You have hit it exactly; and now let me tell you that ever since Dr. Bellows set out on the foreign tour in which he is still occupied, I have watched for the record of his impressions of Oriental life, feeling certain, from what I knew of him, that he would find an attraction in Mohammedanism which he never saw in Christianity. I was not mistaken. He is not a polygamist: he has no taste for a sensual heaven; I don't suppose he prefers the Koran to the Bible; and I never heard of his keeping the inordinate fasts of Ramadan; still, the creed of Islam seems, in its main features, to have caught his fancy, and he loads it with indirect praises, which he never thought of bestowing upon any form of Christianity. Let me read you an extract from one of his recent letters to The Liberal Christian:

"'These people,' he says, referring to the Egyptians, 'know nothing of Christianity which ought to give it any superiority in their eyes over Mohammedanism. When the Arabian prophet commenced his marvellous work, there is little doubt that he was animated by the sincere enthusiasm of a religious reformer. Mohammed recognized both dispensations, the Mosaic and the Christian; and his intelligent followers to this day speak reverently of the Christ. They evade the authority and use of our Scriptures, by asserting that they have been thoroughly corrupted in their text. A learned Mohammedan in India, however, has just written the introduction to a new Commentary on our Bible, in which he ably refutes the Mussulman charge of general corruptness, and adduces all the passages quoted out of the Old and New Testaments in the Koran. But what have Mussulmans seen of Christianity to commend it greatly above their own faith? Is it alleged that Mohammedanism has owed its triumphs and progress to the sword? Is it the fault of Christians if the Cross has not advanced by the same weapon? What infidel rage of the Crescent has ever exceeded the fanatical soldiering of the Crusades, and what has Coeur de Lion to boast over Saladin in enlightenment or appreciation of the Christian spirit? And if we come to bowing, and fasting, and washing, and external forms, I confess that the degrading prostrations, and crossings, and mummeries of the Greek and Catholic churches, with the gaudy trappings of robes and jewels, the worship of saints and images, and the deification of a humble Jewish woman, appear to me to have nothing in the presence of which Mussulmans could feel the lesser reasonableness, purity, or dignity, or the lesser credibility of their own unadorned and simpler superstition. Compared with Catholic and Greek legends, the Koran is a model of purity and elegance of style, and its worst superstitions do not much exceed in grossness the popular interpretation given to monkish fables. As it respects ecclesiastical interference and tyranny, Mohammedanism is a whole world in advance of Romanism or the Greek Church. It is essentially without priest or ritual, in any Catholic sense. The Mussulman is his own priest. He finds Allah everywhere, and he has only to turn toward Mecca, and bow in prayer, and his field, his boat, the desert, is as good an altar as the mosque. It is truly affecting to see the fidelity of the common people to their faith, the apparent heedlessness of observation, the absorption in their prayers, the careful memory of their hours of devotion.'

"And, speaking of the absence of symbols and rites in the mosques, he adds: 'Surely there is something grand in this simplicity, and something vital in a faith which, aided by so little external appliance, has survived in full vigor twelve hundred years'"

"Why don't he admire the vitality of the devil? Satan has survived in full vigor a good deal more than twelve hundred years."

"That would be about as logical. But is it not melancholy to see how far a man whom we would like to respect can be carried by his uncontrolled vagaries! He demanded a 'historical church:' there is only one in Christendom, and that he will not have; and now it almost seems as if he felt an occasional temptation to search for one outside of Christendom. Protestantism, he finds, has run its course. Catholicism he will have nothing to do with. What, then, is left him, if he will be a religious man at all? That seems to be the question which perplexes him and the small but intelligent school of thinkers of whom he is the representative. As the Jews are still waiting for the Christ they crucified eighteen hundred years ago, so the Bellows school are watching for the coming of that Christianity which they have already rejected. And both, it seems to me, are sick at heart with hope long deferred."

"Yes; we hear little now of the confident prophetic tone in which Dr. Bellows some years ago discoursed of the glories of the new religion of humanity, and predicted a resettlement of worn-out creeds and a revival of suspended faith. He writes now rather of the desolation of the present than of brightness which he discerns in the future. And this brings us back to the point from which we started. While Protestant theologians in general are discarding vituperation, there are certain of our opponents who show us a bitterness to which they were not formerly accustomed, because they have been disappointed in their own religious aspirations, and have a vague, half-conscious, and wholly unwelcome impression that the Catholic Church alone is capable of satisfying them. Dr. Bellows, for instance, travels through Europe and finds that Protestantism is everywhere lifeless. He is bold enough to say so; but he takes his revenge in the next breath by trying to show that the Catholic Church is no better. He is powerless to arrest the decay which is destroying his own organization, but he seems to find a melancholy compensation in attacking Catholicism. He reminds me of what the boy said when he was thrashed by a school-fellow: 'If I can't whip you, I can make faces at your sister.' He visits Paris, and confesses that 'Protestantism makes next to no headway' in France, and is torn by internal dissensions. He goes to the heart of Protestant Germany, and finds the general aspect 'one of painful decay in the faith and spirituality of the people.' All over the continent, he observes that where the Catholic faith has died out, 'nothing vigorous has shot up in its place,' and the masses of the population are 'without aspiration, devoutness, or faith in the invisible.' 'Protestantism, as it appears here, is a chilled, repulsive, ungrowing thing, entering very little into the national or the social and domestic life, and apparently not destined in any of its present forms to animate the passions or win and shape the hearts and lives of the middle classes. ... Out of the present elements of faith and worship in Germany I see no prospects of any healthy and contagious religious life arising.' Nay, what is worse than all, the peculiar form of Protestantism upon which, if upon any. Dr. Bellows would rely for the regeneration of Europe, is in no better way than the others. 'It does not appear,' he says, 'that the liberal element in the Protestantism of Germany, I mean that branch of its Protestantism which we should consider 'most in sympathy with Unitarianism, is very earnest or creative. It seems still rather a negation of orthodoxy than an affirmation of the positive truths of Christianity. ... Forced to take positive ground, I fear that a large part of this extensive body would be compelled to abandon Christian territory altogether.' From Berlin he writes that 'the whole life of the national church is sickly and discouraging;' from Strasburg, that Protestantism 'must learn some new ways before it will become the religion of the people of France, Italy, or even Germany;' from Vienna, that the Protestantism of Austria is 'essentially torpid and unprogressive, presenting nothing attractive or promising.' These passages, and many more of similar purport, we may take as equivalent to the little boy's confession that he could not whip his antagonist. When it comes to the other part, the making faces at his sister, I am bound to say that Dr. Bellows shows more temper than strength. In Vienna, he deplored the lukewarmness of the Catholic people all through Germany, yet, in several previous letters, he had contrasted their zeal in church-going with the indifference of the Protestants. He accuses the clergy of avarice, though in Rome he compliments the priests for their personal merits, their 'seriousness, decorum, and fair intelligence.' He declares that 'the Catholic Church is an artful substitute for anything that a human soul ought to desire;' that she is 'the chief hinderance to progress;' that she has 'glorified the blessed Mother into the Almighty;' that she 'mutters spells and practises necromancy at her altars,' and all that kind of thing, which I need not repeat, because we have heard it in almost the very same words scores of times before. But the most curious of all his angry attacks was made—where, think you? Why, on a steamer in the Levant, where there was nothing whatever to provoke him: where the onslaught was so perfectly gratuitous that it burst upon the calm flow of his letter like a thunderbolt rending the summer sky. Here it is:

"'Roman Catholicism, weak in every member, is prodigious in its total effectiveness, because it is a unit. It is quietly seizing America, piece by piece, state by state, city by city. In a new state like Wisconsin, for instance, it has the oldest college, the largest theological school, the best hospitals and charities, the finest churches; and what is true of Wisconsin is equally true of many other Western states. Protestantism, with a hundred times the wealth, intelligence, public spirit, and administrative ability, by reason of its sectarian jealousies and divisions can have no parallel successes, and is losing rapidly its place in legislative grants and in public policy. The Irish Catholics spot the members of state legislatures who vote against the appropriations they call for, and are able in our close elections to defeat their return. Representatives become servile and pliable, and Romanism flourishes. A Quaker gentleman of wealth, in the West, (the story is exactly true,) married a Vermont girl who had become a Catholic in a nunnery where she was sent for her education. It was agreed that, if children were given them, the boys should be reared in the faith of their father, the girls in that of their mother. The Vermont mother gave her husband ten girls, but never a son! Eight of them grew up Catholics, married influential men, and brought up their children Catholics, and in some cases brought over their husbands, and so the Roman Church was recruited with Protestant wealth and Quaker blood to a vast extent. So much for sending Protestant girls to Roman Catholic seminaries, and then complaining that so many Protestants are lost to the superstitions of Romanism! There is an apathy about the Roman Catholic advances in the United States among American Protestants, which will finally receive a terrible shock. There is no influence at work in America so hostile to our future peace as the Roman Catholic Church. The next American war will, I fear, be a religious war—of all kinds the worst. If we wish to avert it, we must take immediate steps to organize Protestantism more efficiently, and on less sectarian ground.'

"Well, upon my word, the conduct of that Vermont girl was abominable. I suppose Dr. Bellows thinks she never would have been artful enough to swindle her husband out of all his expected boys if she had not been brought up in a convent. 'So much for sending Protestant girls to Roman Catholic seminaries!' I should think so, indeed!"

"The story is very ridiculous; but the moral Dr. Bellows draws from it is worse than ridiculous. If we wish to avert a religious war, he says, 'we must take immediate steps to organize Protestantism more efficiently, and on less sectarian ground.' That means that Protestantism must maintain an overwhelming preponderance in this country by fair means or foul. If it cannot convert the papists with the Bible, it ought to knock them on the head with a bludgeon. And the same atrocious sentiment is still more plainly expressed by an Irish writer in The Liberal Christian of Feb. 29th, who says, 'Popery and Fenianism are Siamese curses, withering every noble and humane feeling wherever they exist. ... They deserve no toleration; they should receive no mercy.' There's a 'liberal' Christian for you, with a vengeance!"

"Well, we can afford to ridicule such fears and threats; but it is very sad. Here, where nearly all honest people seem to have made up their minds to reform their bad language, and be as polite in discussing sacred questions as in talking over secular affairs, a sect which professes toleration and fairness beyond all others goes back to the old style of polemical blackguardism. I can appreciate the unfortunate position of the liberal Christians, when, having pushed ahead so far, they find that there is 'no more road' in that direction, and can understand that only one of two courses may seem open to them, either to berate the Catholics or to join them; but the instruction which the barrister received from his attorney when the law and the facts were both against him, 'Abuse the other side,' does not apply so well to religion as to jury trials. We must have a different style of argument if anybody is to be converted or improved by the discussion.

Nellie Netterville.

Chapter XII.

When first O'More unfolded the cloak in which he had brought Nellie safely through the flames, she lay so white and still that, for one brief, terrible moment, he almost fancied she was dead. The fresh air, however, soon revived her, and, opening her eyes, filled with a look of terror which afterward haunted them for months, she fixed them upon Roger, and whispered nervously:

"Where are the rest—the priest and all? Where are they?"

"They are with their God, I trust," he answered solemnly. At that awful moment he felt that he could say nothing but the truth, terrible as he knew that truth must sound in the ears of the pale girl beside him. His words, in fact, seemed to cut through her like a knife, and she fell upon her knees, exclaiming: "I only saved—I only saved! O my God, my God! have mercy on their souls!" Then suddenly remembering that, if she were safe, she owed it entirely to Roger, she added earnestly, "You have risked your life for mine. How shall I thank you?"

"By helping me once more to save it," he answered curtly. "Nellie," he went on rapidly, for he knew too well that every moment they lingered there was fraught with peril—"Nellie, you are saved, and yet not safe yet! Your life, however, is in your own hands now, and with courage and good trust in Providence, I doubt not we shall pull safely through."

Nellie seemed to gather up her mind for a great effort, and said calmly:

"Only say what I must do, and I will do it."

"The case is this," said Roger shortly: "Yonder tower," and he pointed to the burning pile overhead—"yonder tower must fall soon, and, if we linger here, will crush us in its ruins. On the other hand, even if we could creep round to the opposite side of the church, a thing in itself almost impossible, the fanatical demons who guard the gates will probably shoot us down like dogs. The cliff, therefore, is our best—almost our only chance. Nevertheless I leave the choice in your own hands. Only remember you must decide at once."

"The cliff, then, be it!" said Nellie, with white lips but flashing eyes. "God is more merciful than man. He will save us, perhaps; if not, his will be done—not mine. I will trust entirely to him—entirely to him and you."

Almost ere she had finished speaking, Roger had undone the rope which he carried round his waist, and was looking eagerly about him for some means of securing it in such a way as to make it useful to Nellie in her descent. Fortunately for his purpose, a thorny tree had planted itself, some hundreds of years before, in a fissure of the rocks so close to the walls of the tower that, old, and gray, and stunted, as it now was, its roots had in all probability penetrated beneath their broad foundation, and were quite as firmly settled in the ground. Upon this Roger pounced at once, and having tried it sufficiently to make tolerably sure of its powers of endurance, he passed one end of his rope round the thickest and lowest portions of the stem, and made it fast with a sailor's knot. The other end he threw over the cliff, and then watched its fall with a terrible, silent fear at his heart lest it should prove shorter than his need required. Down it went and down, and he stooped over to mark its progress until Nellie felt sick with fear, and turned away to avoid the giddiness which she knew would be fatal to them both.

At last she heard him say, "Thank God, it has reached the platform!" Then he turned round and anxiously scanned her features.

"Nellie," he said, "this thing is difficult, but not impossible. I have seen you bound like a deer down cliffs almost as steep, if not so high. The great, the only real peril, is in the eyesight. Lot's wife perished by a look. You must promise me neither to glance up nor down, but to keep your eyes fixed on the rocks before you. Hold well by the rope; take it hand over hand like a sailor, (I remember that you know the trick;) and leave the rest to me. There is really a path, though you can hardly see it from this spot; and there are chinks and crevices besides, in which you will easily find footing. You must feel for them as you descend; and when you are at a loss, I shall be below to help you. Neither will you be quite alone, for I am going to fasten you by this cord, so that, if you should happen to let go, I may perhaps be able to support you."

"My God!" said Nellie, white with terror, as he passed a strong, light cord, first round her waist and then his own, in such a way that there was length sufficient to enable them to act independently of each other, while, at the same time, neither could have fallen without almost to a certainty insuring the destruction of both. "My God, I cannot consent to this. Go by yourself; my fall would kill you."

"But you will not fall—you shall not fall," he pleaded anxiously, "if only you will abide by my directions."

"Go alone, I do beseech you!" she answered, with a shiver. "You cannot save me, and I shall but insure your destruction with my own."

"Nay, then, I give it up," he answered, almost sullenly. "We will stay here and die together, for never shall it be said of an O'More that, in seeking safety for himself, he left a woman thus to perish."

"Then, in God's name, let us try!" said Nellie; "only tell me what to do, and I will do it—if I can."

"Hold fast the rope, that is all. Never let one hand go until the other has grasped it firmly, and leave the rest to me. I will help to place your feet in safe resting-places as we go down. Only trust me, and all will yet be well."

"I will trust to you and to God, and our Lady," said Nellie, unconsciously repeating the password of the morning. Her color was rising fast, and her eyes had begun to sparkle with excitement. O'More seized the propitious moment, and, almost before Nellie knew it, she had begun her perilous descent.

"Are you steady now—quite steady?" he asked, in as low a voice as if he feared to startle the air with motion by speaking louder. Yes! with the natural instinct of a mountain climber Nellie had already found a rough indented spot in which her foot was firmly planted, and he descended a step lower. Thus inch by inch they went, Nellie ever clinging to the rope, and O'More guiding her descent with a success he had hardly looked for, and which he felt to be almost miraculous. His heart at last beat high with hope; for he saw by the distance which they had descended that they must be nearing a sort of shelf or platform formed by a sudden bulging out of the lower strata of the cliffs, and he knew that they were safe if they could only reach that spot, the rest of the path being so well marked that, even without his aid, Nellie could easily have found her way from thence to the sands beneath.

But the surge of the sea boomed louder and louder as she approached it, and at last, fairly forgetting Roger's caution, she turned her head a little, and glanced downward. Then, for the first time, she became fully conscious of the terrible position she occupied, suspended as it seemed by a very thread between earth and sky, and with the great, deep, awful ocean rolling hundreds of feet below her. Her head swam, her eyesight failed her, she had just enough presence of mind left to grasp the rope firmly by both hands, when, feeling as if her senses were utterly deserting her, she cried out:

"O my God, I am going! Save me, Roger, I am going!"

"No, no!" he cried, in agony, for he knew only too well the danger of the thought. "Hold fast—hold on; for Christ's dear sake, hold on! One step—two steps more, and you are safe. There!" he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, as he felt his own foot touch the platform; and seizing Nellie by the waist, he drew her, hardly conscious of what he was doing, by main strength to his side. "There, oh! thank God—thank God, you are safe at last!"

He was just in time. Nellie had that very moment let go the rope, and if he had not caught her, would inevitably have been dashed to pieces on the rocks below. As it was, he landed her safely and gently on the ledge where he himself was standing, and without venturing to loose her entirely from his grasp, laid her down, that she might recover from her nervous panic.

"You are safe," he kept repeating, as if it required the assurance of his own voice to make certain of the fact. "You are safe!" and then with an instinctive yet entirely unacknowledged consciousness on his part, that his own safety might perhaps be at least a portion of her care, he added—"we are safe now. You can stay here until you are quite yourself again; only do not look up or down—at least not just yet, not until the giddiness is gone. You forgot Lot's wife, or this never would have happened."

Nellie was not insensible, though she looked so. She only felt as if she were in a dream. She understood perfectly all that Roger said; the shadow even of a smile seemed to pass over her white lips as he alluded to Lot's wife; but his voice fell with a muffled sound, as if it came from a great distance, on her ear; and earth, and sky, and cliff, and ocean, all seemed blending and floating in a wild fantasy through her brain. By degrees, however, a sort of awakening seemed to creep over her, but she did not use it at first either to look up or speak. Possibly she felt that words would be powerless to express her thoughts, and was glad of any excuse for silence. Roger did not like to hurry her, and he therefore employed the next few minutes in scanning the sea in search of Henrietta. She was there, exactly in the place in which he had bidden her to wait for him; but she was watching the burning tower overhead, and had evidently very little notion that any of its victims had escaped. From the spot where he was standing, he could easily have made her hear him; but fearing that his voice might rouse up some hidden foe, he turned to Nellie for assistance.

"Have you a handkerchief," he asked, "or anything of that kind which you could give me for a signal?"

Without answering, without even looking up, (so obedient had she grown, poor Nellie!) she untied the scarlet kerchief, which, in her harmless vanity, she had that morning thrown over her head and knotted beneath her chin, as the last thing wanting to her costume of a native girl, and gave it into Roger's hand. He waved it for some time without success; but at last Henrietta saw it, and began to row vigorously into shore.

"Now you may look," cried Roger joyfully, helping Nellie to stand up; "now you may look; for you will see nothing but what it is good for you to see. Henrietta Hewitson is waiting for us in the boat below, and the sooner we leave this resting-place the better."

"Henrietta Hewitson!" cried Nellie, roused effectually to life again by the mention of her name. "His daughter! How kind, how noble! Shall we not go to her at once?"

"If you are able," he answered. "The rest of the way is easy—easier far than the cliffs of Clare Island, which you climbed with me yesterday."

"Easy! oh! yes, surely it is easy," cried Nellie wildly. "O my mother—my mother!" she sobbed, with a little gasp; "I shall see her once again—and my grandfather! the poor old man will not be left desolate, after all."

Roger saw that she was growing every moment more and more excited, and he cut the matter short by carrying her down to the beach and laying her in the boat, as if she had been a baby. Henrietta received her with a look of remorse, as if she felt that she herself must seem, somehow or other, responsible in Nellie's eyes for the pain and misery she had been enduring for the last few hours; and while she wrapt her tenderly and affectionately in a cloak taken from her own shoulders, Roger sent the boat, by a few vigorous strokes of the oar, to a safe distance from the rocks near which they had embarked. This manoeuvre placed them in full view of the burning tower, and he dropped his oar and gazed upon it as if irresistibly attracted by the spectacle. The body of the church was by this time a smouldering heap of ruins, but the tower, wrapt in its terrible robes of fire, still stood bravely up as if in defiance of its coming doom. For a single second it remained thus, unyielding and apparently uninjured, than it began visibly to totter. Another moment, and it was swaying backward and forward like a leaf in an autumn storm; and yet another, and, as if in a last wild effort to escape from the flames that swathed it, it plunged right over the cliffs, the fragments of its ruined walls crashing and crumbling from rock to rock till they fell with a roar like thunder into the waters underneath. Both girls, at the first symptom of the catastrophe impending, had instinctively shut their eyes; but Roger, on the contrary, looked on as steadily as if he were keeping a count of every falling stone in order to set it down in his debt of vengeance against those who had done the deed. Not a syllable, however, did he utter, until the last stone had fallen, and the last fiery gleam disappeared from the cliff; but then, as if unable any longer to endure in silence, he threw up his arms toward heaven, and exclaimed:

"Men, women, and children all sent before their time to judgment! O God! what punishment hast Thou reserved in this world or the next that shall be heavy enough for such a deed as this!"

"Curse me not—curse not!" cried Henrietta, with anguish in her voice, "The doom, God knows, is heavy enough already."

"Curse you!" said the astonished Roger, "you, to whom I owe more than my own life a thousand times. Nay, Mistress Henrietta, what madness has made you fear it?"

"I fear! I fear! Why should I not?" sobbed Henrietta. "The sin of the parents shall be visited on the children, and he is my father, after all!"

"Your father! your father!" Roger muttered, trying to keep down the storm of passion that was choking him. "Well, well, he is, as you say, your father, and so I must perforce be silent."

"Alas! alas!" Henrietta pleaded, "if you did but know the completeness of his religious mania, you would also comprehend how easily a man, merciful in all things else, can in this one thing be merciless."

"Nay," said Roger bitterly; "it needs, I think, no great stretch of intellect to understand it thoroughly. A man, fresh from the siege of Tredagh, where children were dashed from the battlements, lest, 'like nits, they should become troublesome if suffered to increase,' will, doubtless, merely consider the holocaust of human life which lies buried beneath yonder ruins as a whole burnt-offering, smelling sweet in the nostrils of the Lord, which he, as his high-priest, has been deputed to offer up."

He broke off suddenly, for a hand was laid upon his arm, and a white face lifted pleadingly to his. "Speak not thus of her father," whispered Nellie. "Speak not thus; see how she is weeping!"

"Her tears are his best plea for mercy, then," said he in a gentler tone, and seizing the oars, he began to row as vigorously as if he hoped to quiet his boiling spirit by the mere fact of bodily exhaustion. Nellie made no answer, and silence fell upon them all.

The deed just done was not of a nature lightly to be forgotten, and they went quietly on their way, as people will, upon whom the shadow of a great terror still hangs heavily. Just, however, as they entered the harbor of Clare Island, Nellie caught sight of a well-known figure, and uttered a cry of joy. It was Hamish, and, in her impatience, she scarcely waited until the boat was fastened ere she was at his side. But there was no gladness in his eye as he turned to greet her. He was deadly pale, and his left arm hung powerless at his side. Nellie saw nothing of this at first, however, she was thinking so entirely of her mother.

"Is she come, dear Hamish?" she cried. "Where is she?"

"In Dublin," he answered curtly.

"In Dublin—and you here?" cried Nellie in dismay.

"Because she sent me," he replied.

"What is it, Hamish? What is it?" faltered Nellie, struggling with a sense of some new and terrible misfortune impending over her.

"She is sore sick—sick even unto death," Hamish reluctantly replied. He could not bring himself to utter the terrible truth as yet.

Nellie stood for a moment mute with terror. She read upon her foster-brother's face that worse news than even this was about to follow; but when she would have asked what it was, courage and voice completely failed her. She knew it, however, soon enough. From his seat by the door of the tower, Lord Netterville had caught a glimpse of Hamish, and came down at once to greet him. Excitement seemed for one brief moment to have restored all his faculties, and he cried out eagerly:

"You here, good Hamish! I am heartily glad to see you! And what news bring you from Netterville? How goes my lady daughter? Ill, do you say—sore stricken? Nay, man, remember that she is still but young. It cannot surely be an illness unto death?"

"Yea, but it is, my lord," said Hamish, speaking almost roughly in his agony. "Death, and nothing short of death, as surely as that I am here to say it."

"Art thou a prophet?" asked Roger, bending his dark brows upon him, and half tempted to suspect a snare. "Art thou a prophet, that thou darest to speak thus confidently of the future?"

"Sir," said Hamish, driven at last beyond his patience, and hardly knowing how to break his news more gently, "it needs not to be a prophet to foresee that the widow of a royalist and a Catholic to boot, shut up in prison and condemned on a false charge of murder, is in danger—nay, said I danger?—and is as certain of her doom as if she were already in her coffin."

Nellie uttered a wild cry, the first and last that escaped her lips that day, and Lord Netterville repeated faintly, "Murder!"

"Ay, murder; and in another week she dies," Hamish answered, now desperate as to the consequences of his revelation.

Nellie turned short round toward Roger:

"I must go!" she said. "I must go at once."

"Of course you must," he answered, in that helpful tone which had so often that morning already reassured her.

"She has sent me hither to conduct you," Hamish—with some latent jealousy of the interference of a stranger—was beginning, when, unable any longer to conceal the bodily anguish he was enduring, he uttered a moan of pain, and leaned back against the low wall of the pier.

Then for the first time Nellie looked into his face, and saw that he was as white as ashes.

"My God! my God!" she cried in her perplexity. "What is to become of us? He is dying too."

"No, no," Hamish mustered his failing strength to answer, "It is nothing. They shot at me as I took boat from the beach, and hit me in the arm; but it is not broken, and if only I could stop the bleeding, I should be well enough to start at once."

But he grew paler and paler as he spoke, and the blood gushed in torrents from his arm, as he tried to lift it for their inspection. Roger shouted to Norah to bring down a cordial from the tower, and he then helped Nellie and Henrietta in their nervous and not very efficient endeavors to check the bleeding with their kerchiefs. Hamish was by this time well-nigh insensible, but a cup of wine revived him, and having ascertained that he was merely suffering from a flesh-wound, Roger sent back Norah to rummage out some bandages which he remembered were among his soldier stores. With these he stanched the blood, and carefully bound up the wounded arm, assuring Nellie at the same time that her faithful follower was merely suffering from loss of blood, and that in a few days he would be as well again as ever. Nellie must be forgiven if at that moment she had no thought excepting for her mother.

"A few days," she cried despairingly; "then I must go back alone; for my mother will be dead by that time."

Hamish did not hear her. He was leaning back in that half-dreamy state which often follows upon loss of blood; but Roger answered instantly:

"You shall go at once; but certainly not alone." He turned round to look for Lord Netterville; the poor old man had sunk upon the ground, and in his helplessness and perplexity was weeping like a child.

"Lord Netterville!" said Roger suddenly.

Lord Netterville dashed the tears from his eyes, and looked up anxiously in the young man's face.

"Lord Netterville," Roger repeated, giving him his hand and helping him to stand up, "you see how the case stands; your granddaughter must go to her mother, and go at once. Any delay were fatal. This poor fellow is totally unable to accompany her. Will you trust her to my care? I swear to you that she shall be as dear and precious to me as a sister, and that I will watch over her and wait upon her as if I were in very deed her brother."

With a look of relief and confidence that was touching to behold, the old man wrung the hand which Roger gave him, and then silently turned toward Nellie. Roger did did not ask her if she would accept him as an escort; he felt that after the events of the morning she would need no protestations of loyalty at his hand, and merely said:

"In two hours we can start; but I shall have to go first to the mainland to look for horses."

"Nay, that shall be my business," said Henrietta suddenly. "In two hours hence, at the foot of the round tower, you will find them waiting; and I will bring you at the same time a letter to a friend, who may, I think, prove useful to you in Dublin. Follow me not now," she added in a tone that admitted of no reply, as Roger made a movement as if he would have gone with her to the boat, "follow me not now; I can best arrange matters if I go alone; but in two hours hence I shall expect you."

Chapter XIII.

Henrietta was as good as her word, and, thanks to her energy and kindness, Nellie, with Roger for an escort, was enabled to commence her journey that very afternoon, both she and her companion being mounted upon good swift steeds, which the young English girl had made no scruple of abstracting for the purpose from her father's stable. She had done even more than this; for she had conquered her pride and petulance sufficiently to write a letter to Major Ormiston, in which she entreated him, by the love he once professed to bear her, to do all he could for Nellie, and to procure her every facility for access to her mother. This she had given to Roger, hinting to him at the same time that her correspondent was high in favor of the Lord Deputy, and might possibly be able to induce the latter to commute the sentence of death hanging over Mrs. Netterville into one of fine or imprisonment, even if he could not or would not grant her a full pardon. Of this hope, however, Roger said not a syllable to Nellie, fearful, if it should come to naught, of adding the bitterness of disappointment to the terrible measure of misery which in that case would be her portion.

The journey to Dublin was a difficult and a long one, and if Nellie had been allowed to act according to her own wishes, she would probably have used up both herself and her horse long before she had reached its end. Fortunately, however, for the accomplishment of her real object, Roger took a more exact measure of the strength of both than, under the circumstances, she was capable of doing for herself, and he insisted every night upon her seeking a few hours' repose in any habitation, however poor, which presented itself for the purpose.

With this precaution, and supported also in some measure by the very excitement of her misery, Nellie bore up bravely against the inevitable fatigues and discomforts of the journey. The horses, however, proved less untiring. In spite of Roger's best care and grooming, both at last began to show symptoms of distress, and they were a long day's journey yet from Dublin when it became evident to him that his own in particular was failing rapidly. Henrietta had chosen it chiefly for its quality of speed; but it was too light for a tall and powerfully-built man like Roger; and more than once that day he had been compelled to dismount, and proceed at a walking pace, in order to allow it to recover itself. Night was rapidly closing in, and Nellie, who, preoccupied by her own anxieties, had not as yet remarked the state of the poor animal, ventured to remonstrate with Roger upon the slowness of their proceedings. Then for the first time he pointed out to her the exhaustion of their steeds, acknowledging his conviction that his own in particular was in a dying state, and that two hours more, if he survived so long, would be the utmost measure of the work that he could expect him to accomplish. Nellie was for a moment in despair, and then a bold thought struck her—why not ride straight for Netterville? They had been for some hours in the country of the Pale, and they could not be very far from her old home now. Every feature in the landscape was becoming more and more familiar to her eyes, and she was certain that, in less than the two hours which Roger had assigned as the utmost limit of his steed's endurance, they would have reached her native valley. Once there, they would not only be in the direct road to Dublin, but they would also have a better chance of finding horses than they could have in a place where they were entirely unknown. Netterville, it was true, was now wholly and entirely, with its fields and stock, in the hands of the Parliamentarians; but she was certain of the fidelity of the poor people there, and as certain as she was of her own existence, not only that they would not betray her, but that they would also do all they could to help and speed her on her way. The plan seemed feasible; at all events, no other presented itself at the moment to Roger's mind, and accordingly, after having done all he could to relieve his horse, and prepare him for a fresh spurt, they struck right across the country eastward toward the sea. Nellie proved right in her conjectures. In even less than two hours from the moment in which they started, they reached the valley of Netterville—reached it, in fact, just in time; for Roger had barely leaped from his horse's back ere the poor animal was rolling on the turf in the agonies of death. Nellie then proposed that they should walk to the cottage of old Grannie, and dismounted in her turn. Her horse was not so exhausted as that of Roger, nevertheless it was even then unfit for work, and would in all probability be still more so on the morrow. Roger therefore thought it better to leave it to its fate than to run the risk of attracting notice by bringing it with them to Grannie's habitation. He hoped, as Nellie did, that they would have a good chance of finding fresh steeds at Netterville next morning; and after carefully hiding the two saddles in a clump of gorse, they set out on their way on foot. The old woman received Nellie with a cry of joy. No sooner, however, did the latter mention the business which had brought her there, than the faithful creature stifled all her gladness at this unexpected meeting with her foster-child, and turned to weep in good and sorrowful earnest over the woe and shame impending upon the house of Netterville, in the person of its unhappy mistress. While Nellie ate, or tried to eat, the simple fare set before her by her hostess, Roger told the latter of the fate which had befallen their horses, and inquired as to the possibility of replacing them by fresh ones. Grannie shook her head despondingly. Royalists and Parliamentarians alternately, she said, had seized upon every available horse they could find in the country, until, as far as she knew, there was not a "garran" fit for a two hours' journey within ten miles of Netterville. As to Netterville itself, if there were any horses left in its stables, (which she doubted,) they must of necessity belong to the English soldier to whose lot, in the drawing of the debentures, the castle and its grounds had fallen; much, the old woman added with a chuckle, to the disgust of the officer who commanded them at the time of the recent murder, and who, having coveted the place exceedingly for himself, was supposed to have pressed the matter heavily against Mrs. Netterville for the facilitating of his own selfish wish.

Roger listened to all this in silence, privately resolving to risk his own detention, if discovered, as an outlaw, and to visit the stable of Netterville next morning, in hopes of procuring a fresh mount. As nothing, however, could be done till then, he entreated Nellie to lie down and rest, after which he left the hut, there not being a second chamber in it, and throwing himself on a bank of heather on the outside, was soon fast asleep. It was long before Nellie could follow his example, but at last she fell into that state of dreamless stupor which often, in cases of extreme exhaustion, takes the place of healthy slumber. Such as it was, at all events, it was rest—rest of body and rest of mind—a truce to the aching of weary limbs, and to the yet more intolerable weariness of a mind, wincing and shivering beneath a coming woe. The first gleam of daylight roused her from it. There was never any pleasant twilight now, between sleeping and waking, in Nellie's mind! With the first gleam of consciousness came ever the pale image of her mother, and there was neither rest nor sleep for her after that. In the present instance, anxiety as to the chance of being able to prosecute her journey at all, was added to her other troubles; and, unable to endure suspense upon such a vital point even for a moment, she opened the door quietly, so as not to disturb old Granny, and looked out for Roger. He was nowhere to be seen, and she guessed at once that he had gone up to the castle. Then a longing seized her to look once more upon the old place where she had been so happy formerly; and, without giving herself time to waver, she walked hurriedly up the valley. She did not, however, venture to the front of the house, but resolved instead to take a path which, skirting round it, would lead her to the offices behind. It was, by one of those strange accidents which we call chance, but for which the angels perhaps have quite another name, the very path which her mother had always taken when visiting the sick soldier. The door of the room which he had occupied was slightly ajar as Nellie passed it; and, moved by an impulse for which she could never afterward thoroughly account, she pushed it open without noise, and entered. The room was not uninhabited, as she had at first supposed. A woman, evidently in the last stage of some mortal malady, lay stretched upon the bed, and a soldier of the Cromwellian type was seated with an open Bible in his hand beside her. He had probably been employed either in reading or exhorting, but at the moment when Nellie entered, it was the woman who was speaking.

"I tell you, soldier!" Nellie heard her querulously murmur—"I tell you, soldier, it is mere waste of breath, your preaching. So long as that woman's death lies heavy on my soul, so long I can look for nothing better in the next world than hell."

At that very moment Nellie noiselessly advanced, and stood in silence at the foot of the bed.

The woman recognized her at once, and with a wild shriek flung herself out of the bed at her feet. The girl recoiled in horror and dismay. She had learned the whole story of her mother's condemnation from Hamish ere she left Clare Island.

"Murderess of my mother!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anguish. "Dare not to lay hands upon her daughter."

"Mercy! mercy!" cried the woman, grovelling on the ground, and seeking with her white shrunken fingers to lay hold of the hem of Nellie's garment. "Mercy! mercy!"

"Where shall I find mercy for my mother?" Nellie asked, as white as ashes, and shaking from head to foot in the agony of her struggle between conscience and resentment—the one urging her to forgive her foe, the other to leave her to her fate. "Where shall I find mercy for my mother?"

"You see, soldier—you see," moaned the poor wretch upon the floor, "the daughter cannot pardon me; why then should God?"

"What would you have?" cried Nellie, almost maddened by the mental conflict. "What would you have? I cannot cure you. What can I do?"

"You can forgive," the woman answered feebly; "then perhaps God will pardon also."

"O my God! my God! give me strength and grace sufficient!" cried Nellie; and then, by an effort of almost superhuman charity, she stooped, put her arms round the dying creature's neck, and kissed her.

The woman uttered a cry of joy, and fell back heavily out of Nellie's arms. A long silence followed.

Nellie looked at the dead, white face, lying quietly on the floor beside her, and felt as if she were dying also, so utterly did her senses seem to fail her, and so dead and numbed were all her faculties in the heavy strain that had been put upon them. A hand was laid at last upon her shoulder. Nellie started violently. She had totally forgotten even the existence of the soldier.

"Nay, fear not, maiden, nor yet grieve inordinately," he said, in a voice of mingled pity and admiration. "Thou hast acted in all this business (I am bound to bear testimony to the truth) in a way worthy of thy mother's daughter."

"Thank God, at least, that I forgave her," Nellie murmured beneath her breath, scarce conscious of what he was saying.

"Nay, and in very deed," he answered, "thy presence here has been a crowning and a saving mercy for the poor wretch whom we have seen expire. Ever since I found her here last night, dying alone and in despair, I have been striving for her with the Lord, and praying and exhorting, but, as it seemed to me, all in vain, until thy kiss of peace fell like a balm more precious even than that of Gilead on her soul, and restored it, I cannot doubt, (for I saw a light as of exceeding gladness settle upon her dying features,) restored it to long banished peace."

"Thank God that he gave me grace to do it!" Nellie once more whispered. It seemed as if she were powerless to think of aught besides.

"They who do mercy shall in due time find it!" rejoined the soldier, putting a small scrap of written paper into her hand. "In this very room thy mother tended me, when my own comrades had deserted me, fearing the infection; in this very room yonder woman, having been expelled the other portions of the mansion, since order has been taken for the separation of God's elect from the sinful daughters of the land, took up her abode some three days since; and in this very room I last night found her, dying of the malady of which, but for thy mother's care, I must have also perished, and so moved by the prospect of eternal retribution which lay before her, that she of her own accord did dictate, and did suffer me to write down on the spot, a full confession of her own guilt in the matter of the murdered Tomkins, She told me then—and many times afterward in the course of the long night she did continue to aver it—that she herself it was who did the deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die; she having, in a drunken squabble. seized the man's pistol and shot him dead upon the spot. And she furthermore avowed, with unspeakable groanings and many tears, that, terrified at the consequences of her own act, and moved besides by a fiendish desire of vengeance against thy mother, who had in some way unwittingly, in times past, offended her, she not only accused her of the murder, but maintained that accusation afterward upon oath when examined before the High Court of Commissioners in Dublin. Now then, maiden, rise up and speed. Thy mother's life is in thy hands; for with that paper, writ and witnessed by one who, however humble, is not altogether unknown as a zealous soldier in the camp of Israel—with that paper, I say, to attest her innocence, they must of a certainty acknowledge it, and let her go."

"How shall I thank thee, O my God!" cried Nellie, scarcely able to believe her ears that she had heard the soldier rightly.

"It is good to praise God always," he replied sententiously, "but at this moment briefly. Thy present care must be to get to Dublin with what speed thou mayest."

"Alas!" said Nellie, "how shall I get there? I have ridden day and night ever since I heard this unhappy news, and only yesterday evening our horses were so knocked up, that I and my companion had to find our way hither as best we could on foot."

"There are but two horses in these stables, and neither of them are mine to offer," said the soldier, evidently distressed and anxious at the dilemma in which his protégée was placed. "Nevertheless, and the Lord aiding me in my endeavors, I will do what I can. Come with me to the courtyard—I doubt not but thou knowest the way well enough already."

Yes, indeed! poor Nellie knew it well enough, and at any other time she might have wept at revisiting on so sad an errand a spot hitherto pleasantly associated in her mind with many a childish frolic, and many a petted animal, the favorites of the days gone by. Just now, however, she had no inclination to dwell on the memories of the past. Joy at the proved innocence of her mother, and a wild fear lest she herself should arrive too late in Dublin to allow of her profiting by the disclosure, filled her whole soul, and left no room there for sentimental sorrows. She found Roger already in the yard, engaged in hot discussion with an officer of the English army, a coal-black charger, which the latter was holding carelessly by the bridle, being the apparent object of the dispute.

"Ay," muttered her conductor, as he glanced toward the group; "it is, I see, even as I suspected, and I shall have to pay dearly for Black Cromwell." Then leaving Nellie a little in the background, he went up to the English officer and said:

"Here is an unhappy maiden, Captain Rippel, bound upon an errand of life and death, and sorely in need of a good steed to bear her. The fate of a grave, God-fearing woman, even of Mistress Netterville herself, the late owner of this mansion, is dependent on her speed, and, had I twenty horses in the stable, as I have not one, I declare unto thee as God liveth and seeth, that she should have her choice among them all."

"Yea, and undoubtedly," the other answered with a sneer. "Nevertheless, since it is even as thou sayest, and that thou hast them not, I fear me, good master sergeant, that this young daughter of Moab, who has been lucky enough to find favor in your eyes, will be none the better for your good intentions."

"Sir, if you be a man—a gentleman—you cannot, you will not refuse!" cried the indignant Roger. "Consider, this young lady is here a suppliant where once she dwelt the honored mistress of the mansion, and you cannot of a surety say nay! Remember it is no gift we crave, for this purse contains double the value of your steed, strong and of admirable breeding as undoubtedly he is."

He held up a purse as he spoke, the parting gift of Henrietta, from whom, however, he had accepted it merely as a loan, to be afterward repaid in some of the most valuable of the articles yet left him in his tower. It was well filled and heavy; but with a little smile of scorn the officer waved it quietly on one side.

"And how am I to be certified, I pray you, that this young maiden—who seems to have cast witchcraft on you both—is in reality Mistress Netterville, or any other indeed than a base impostor?" he asked with a most offensive leer. "Scarce five days have as yet elapsed since I came hither, sent by the Lord High Deputy himself, to put order in this garrison, and to separate the elect of God from the sinful daughters of the land, and—"

"Sir, do you dare!" cried Roger, suddenly cutting short his speech; and, raising his hand, he would have struck him to the ground if the soldier had not placed himself hastily between them, saying in a monitory tone to Roger:

"If thou wouldst not destroy the young maiden's hopes altogether, sir, leave this affair to me. Another look or word of thine, and it will utterly miscarry."

Roger felt the man was right. It was not by violence or angry words that he could best serve Nellie. He checked himself at once, therefore, and fell back, while the soldier said quietly to his superior officer:

"Thou hast not, peradventure, captain, forgotten the offer which thou didst make to me some three days since, when first the way in which the Lord had disposed of our lots was made known to us at Netterville?"

"Forgotten—no, in sooth—not I!" the other answered roughly. "Nor have I forgotten either with what manifest folly and ingratitude thou didst reject it; better though it was by a hundred pieces of good gold, than that which one of thy comrades didst thankfully accept from Major Pepper."

"Throw Black Cromwell and the white mare Daylight into the bargain, and I accept," the soldier answered quietly.

"What, part with Black Cromwell? Black Cromwell, who hath carried me unhurt through more battles than David himself ever fought against the Philistines?" the officer demanded with well-affected astonishment. "Verily and indeed, master sergeant, thou art, as I do perceive, notwithstanding thy good odor for most punctilious sanctity—thou art, I say, but an extortioner after all. Had it been the mare alone, now, though she also is a very marvel for strength and speed—I had never said thee nay; but to talk to me of parting with Black Cromwell is to prick me, so to speak, upon the very apple of the eye."

"Nevertheless I have a fancy for him, and if I cannot get him, I will still hold fast to Netterville, the inheritance which the Lord himself hath of late assigned me in this new land of promise," the other steadily replied.

"There is the good horse. Battle of Worcester, he is stronger than Black Cromwell, and would altogether suit the maiden better," his superior rejoined in a coaxing tone.

"Yea, but he hath an ugly trick of going lame ere the first mile is over," Sergeant Jackson responded with a knowing smile, and then he added in a tone which was evidently intended to bring the discussion to an end, "It will be all in vain to dispute this matter any further. Captain Rippel. If you have in truth, as you seem to say, made up your mind to keep Black Cromwell for your own riding, I, on the other hand, am equally resolved not to part with this house of Netterville, which will serve me well enough, I doubt not, as a residence, once I have brought my old mother hither to help me in its keeping."

"Nay, then, usurer, take the horse and thy money with it!" cried the officer, in a tone far less expressive of vexation than of triumph at the result of the discussion. "Take thy money and hand me over that debenture which, with the loss of such a charger as Black Cromwell, is, I fear me, but too dearly purchased."

Without deigning to utter a single syllable in return, Sergeant Jackson took the purse which the other in his affected indignation almost flung at his head, with one hand, while with the other he drew forth from the breast-pocket of his coat a paper, being the identical debenture in question, and presented it to his officer. Captain Rippel snatched it hastily from him, ran his eye over it to make sure that it was the right one, and then, turning on his heel, sauntered out of the courtyard, without even condescending to glance toward the spot where Nellie stood anxiously awaiting the result.

Sergeant Jackson instantly dived into one of the stables, and seizing a side-saddle, (Nellie's own saddle of the olden times,) he led forth a strong, handsome mare, as white as milk, and began to saddle it in hot haste; while Roger, taking the hint, did the same for Cromwell.

"I am afraid I have cost you very dear," Nellie said in a low, grateful tone, as she stood beside the sergeant. "Believe me, for nothing less than a mother's life would I have suffered you to make such a sacrifice."

"Nay, maiden, call it not a sacrifice," he answered without looking round, and giving a pull to the girths to make sure that they were tight. "Or if thou needs must think it one, remember that, had not thy good mother saved my life, I should not have been here to make it."

Nellie's heart was too full to speak, and she suffered him to lift her in silence to her saddle. He settled her in it as carefully and tenderly as if, instead of a simple soldier, he had been one of the old courtly race of cavaliers, from which she was herself descended, and then, with one last whispered word of gratitude for himself, and one last loving message for old Grannie, which he promised to deliver to her in person, Nellie rode forth from Netterville, and, without even giving it a farewell glance, turned her horse's head toward Dublin.

Chapter XIV.

The city of Dublin, as it stood within its walls in the days of the Protectorate, barely covered ground to the extent of an Irish mile, and was built entirely on the south side of the Liffey. That side, therefore, only of the river was embanked by quays, and not even that in its entirety; the space now occupied by the new custom-house and other buildings, to the extent of several thousand feet, being then mere ooze and swamp, kept thus by the continued overflowing of the tides.

To the north of the Liffey, however, there was a suburb, built, as time went on and the exigencies of an ever-increasing population required, outside the walls of the fortified city. It was called "Ostmantown," now "Oxmantown," and occupied a very insignificant space between Mary's Abbey and Church street; Stoney Batter, Grange Gorman, and Glassmanogue, being merely villages scattered here and there in the open country to a considerable distance northward. A bridge of very ancient date, the bridge of "Dubhgh-all," also at a later period styled the "Old Bridge," formed the sole means of communication (except by boat) between the city and its northern suburb. Built upon four arches, and closed in on the Dublin side by a strong gate-house with turrets and portcullis, the Old Bridge, like all others of similar antiquity, was broad enough and strong enough to form a sort of street within itself; shops being erected upon either side, and traffic as busy and as eager there, as in the more legitimate thoroughfares of the city.

From Old Bridge men passed at once into Bridge street, (Vicus Pontis formerly,) a long, narrow thoroughfare, hemmed in on one side by the city walls, and on the other by a tolerably handsome row of houses. These houses were almost all built in the cage-work fashion of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and roofed in with tiles and shingles. Many of them also possessed inscriptions which, cut deep into the wood above the doorway, stated the name and calling of the owner, with the addition frequently of some pious sentiment or appropriate phrase from Scripture. This custom seems to have been a favorite one in Dublin, and in the more antique portions of the city there existed houses, even to a very recent period of its history, upon which might still be read the names and occupations of the men who, more than two hundred years before, had resided within their walls.

On the day on which we are about to introduce Dublin to our readers, there had been a considerable amount of stir and bustle going on among its inhabitants, and more especially among those of Bridge street. Rumors had, in fact, been rife since early dawn of an expected rising of the rebels (as the king's partisans were then styled by their opponents) in the north; and men speculated in hope and fear, as their secret wishes moved them, on the probability of the report. It received something like confirmation in the afternoon, one or two regiments of recently arrived English soldiers, armed from head to heel, and evidently ready to go into action at a moment's notice, having been marched out of the city and sent northward. Later on in the day, moreover, it became known that the Lord-Deputy himself, Henry Cromwell, the best of Ireland's recent rulers, accompanied by a strong escort, was proceeding in the same direction, and might be looked for at any moment at the "Ormond Gate," which shut out Bridge street on the city side, just as the "Gate-house" closed it on that of the Old Bridge.

But if people stood at their doors and windows to do honor to the coming of their king-deputy, there yet seemed to be another and still stronger attraction for them at the end of the street opposite that by which he was expected to appear. Eyes were cast quite as often, though more furtively, in the direction of the Old Bridge as in that of the Ormond Gate; for, in the midst of other rumors, there had come a whisper, no one knew how or by whom it had been first set agoing, that a person suspected of belonging to the rebel party had just been arrested on the river, having attempted, by means of a boat, to elude the passage of the Old Bridge, and so penetrate unchallenged into the heart of the city.

There followed, as a matter of course, much secret and some anxious speculation as to the rank and real object of the arrested person, but no one ventured to make open inquiry into the matter. Cromwell's brief reign of blood had stricken men dumb with fear. To have shown the smallest interest in persons suspected of belonging to the rebel party, would have been but to have drawn down suspicion on themselves; and suspicion, in those hard times, was too nearly akin to condemnation to be heedlessly incurred. Instead, therefore, of going at once to the Gate-house and ascertaining the real facts of the case from its guardians, people were content, while awaiting the appearance of the military cavalcade from the castle, to question and conjecture among themselves as to the rank and real business of the arrested man. A flourish of trumpets before Ormond Gate put a stop at last to their gossipings. Heads and eyes, if not hearts and good wishes, were instantly turned in that direction; the gate was flung open, and Henry Cromwell, surrounded by a goodly company of officers and private gentlemen, rode at a brisk pace through it. A moment afterward, and he had swept past all the gazers, and pulled up opposite the Old Bridge. The guard at the Gate-house instantly turned out to receive him, the portcullis was drawn up, and he was actually spurring his horse forward to the bridge, when a girl, in the habit of a western peasant, darted through the soldiers and flung herself on her knees before him. The movement was so rapid and unexpected that, if the Lord-Deputy had not reined up his steed until he nearly threw it on its haunches, he must inevitably have ridden over her. A moment of silent astonishment ensued. The girl herself uttered no cry, and said not a syllable as to the nature of her petition; but as she lifted up her head toward the Lord Henry, her hood, falling back upon her shoulders, revealed a face of ashy whiteness, and there was a pleading, agonized expression in the dark eyes she raised to his, which told more than many words, of the inarticulate anguish of the soul within.

Henry Cromwell was not of a nature to be harsh to any one, much less to a woman; but there had been information enough sent in to him that morning to make him suspect a snare, and he turned sternly for explanation to the chief officer of the guard.

"What means this unseemly interruption, corporal?" he asked, as the latter was vainly endeavoring to induce Nellie to rise from her knees. "Is this maiden a prisoner? or if not a prisoner, is she distraught, that she thus ventures, bare-headed and dressed in such ungodly play-acting fashion, to rush into our very presence?"

"A prisoner of only half-an-hour's standing is she, may it please your excellency," the soldier answered promptly, "she and her companion! They were seen attempting to cross the river in a boat borrowed from some of the natives on the other side, and as it seemed to me that their purpose must needs be seditious to demand such secrecy, I caused both to be apprehended, and have kept them here to wait your honor's further directions in the matter."

"Ormiston," said the Lord-Deputy, turning to one of the younger of the group of officers behind him, "remain you here, and examine, with Corporal Holdfast, into this business. If there be aught which seems important hid beneath this masquerading folly, follow me at once to Glassmanogue, where I shall have business to detain me for a couple of hours; but if it be only, as I do suspect, the silly freak of a love-sick maiden, in that case I shall not look for you before to-morrow morning, when you will bring me, as I have explained already, the last despatches which may have come from England."

Having thus somewhat summarily despatched poor Nellie's business, but little dreaming of the great service he had done her in appointing young Ormiston her guardian, Henry Cromwell dashed over the bridge, and, followed instantly by his escort, galloped northward. The moment Nellie saw that her efforts to hold speech with the Lord-Deputy himself would prove in vain, she had risen of her own accord, and, the hood once more drawn modestly over her head and face, had stood aside to let him pass, with a calm, sad dignity in her look and bearing which had its due effect upon the rough soldier who had made her captive. He did not again attempt to touch, or even to address her, but standing near her silently and respectfully, seemed to wait until of her own accord she should return with him to the Gate-house. Thus unmolested, Nellie forgot his existence altogether, and equally heedless of the crowd, which, having gathered in the wake of the Lord-Deputy, was now gazing curiously and compassionately upon her, she stood considering what her next move should be, when, in obedience to his orders, Harry Ormiston approached her.

As he took Corporal Holdfast's place beside her, Nellie lifted her eyes to his face, and recognized him instantly as the young officer who had been riding with Henrietta on the day of their first meeting in the wilderness. A soft cry of joy escaped her lips, and Harry Ormiston broke down in his half-uttered greeting. He also remembered her face—have we not already told our reader that it was by no means one easily to be forgotten?—but of the when or the where that he had seen it, he had no such distinct a recollection. Silently, and with a look of timid hope stealing over that fair face, Nellie drew Henrietta's missive from her bosom and placed it in his hands.

Ormiston glanced at the superscription, and with a flush of honest joy mantling on his features, eagerly tore it open. Scarcely, however, had he read three lines ere the scene among the mountains, which had ended in his quarrel with his betrothed, rose before him like a vision, and instantly remembering Nellie as the fair girl who had been in some measure, albeit unwittingly, its cause, he turned sharply upon Corporal Holdfast.

"How is this, corporal? I fear me you have made some grave mistake! This young maiden whom you hold a prisoner is the bearer to me of a token from one whose zeal and faithfulness in the good cause cannot be suspected—even from a member of the household of that brave and God-fearing Major Hewitson, who has set up his camp on the very edge of the wilderness, and thus made of his small garrison a very tower of strength against the incursions of the enemy."

"Nay, and if your honor says it, it must needs be true," the man—a bluff old soldier, with little pretensions to sanctity in his composition—answered with suppressed impatience; "and therefore I can only marvel that a maiden, known and esteemed by the family of worthy Major Hewitson, should not only have sought to cheat our vigilance by crossing the river privately in a boat, but should have done so in the company of a man whom I myself can testify to having been a chief of some repute in the army of the Irish enemy, having crossed swords with him at the battle of 'Knocknaclashy,' as I think they call it in their barbarous language, where he fought (I needs must own it) with a valor worthy of a better cause."

Major Ormiston turned, gravely but kindly, to Nellie.

"I fear me much," he said, "that you have been but ill-advised in all this business. Why not have presented yourself openly at the bridge if the matter which has brought you hither will bear investigation? and why, more than all the rest, have you come attended by a person whose very company must needs render you suspect yourself?"

"O sir!" said Nellie, weeping sadly, as she began to fear that even Henrietta's recommendation to mercy might perhaps avail her little; "we had not the password, without which we never should have been permitted to enter Dublin by the bridge; and our errand is, alas! of such a nature, that every moment lost is of deep and sad importance."

"Our errand," Ormiston thoughtfully repeated. "This errand, then, is not entirely your own, but is in some way or other interesting also to the man by whom Master Holdfast tells me you are accompanied."

"He should have said 'a gentleman,'" Nellie answered, with a slight rebuking emphasis on the latter word—"a gentleman who, at his own great trouble, and, I fear me, risk, has enabled me to accomplish this journey; in which, however, he has no other interest than such as any kind and noble heart might feel in the sorrows and perils of an unprotected girl."

"Where is he—this other prisoner?" Ormiston asked, turning for information to the corporal.

"In the gate-house, sir, where we have him safe under lock and key; for he was no prisoner to be left at large like this silly maiden, who begged so hard to be allowed to see the Lord-Deputy go by, that I found it not in my heart to deny her so small a favor; for the doing of which, I trust I have not incurred the displeasure either of your honor or of his highness the Lord Henry."

"Certainly not, honest Holdfast; you have acted both well and mercifully in all this business. And now lead the way to the gate-house, and trouble not your wits about this young maiden. I myself will be her surety that she attempt not to escape."

He offered his hand very respectfully to Nellie as he finished speaking, 'and she suffered him to lead her in silence toward the bridge. As they entered the gate-house, however, she quietly withdrew her hand and glided from his side to that of Roger.

Ormiston instantly recognized the latter as the dispossessed owner of the "Rath," and an officer, beside, of some standing in the recently disbanded army of the Irish. Courteously saluting him, therefore, he informed him that he had been deputed by the Lord-Deputy to inquire into the nature of the business which had brought him to Dublin, adding an earnest hope on his own part that it might prove to be in no way connected with political affairs.

"That, most assuredly, it is not," said Roger, pleased and touched by the young officer's manner, and satisfied by Henrietta's letter, which Ormiston still held open in his hand, that he was addressing the person for whom it had been intended. "My business is one which solely concerns this young gentlewoman, and concerns her, in fact, so nearly, that if you cannot aid her, as Mistress Hewitson half hinted that you could, I trust, at all events, you will give me as much of my liberty for this one day as may enable me to do so myself. I too am a soldier and an officer. Major Ormiston, and you may trust me that I will not abuse your favor."

"Sir," said Nellie imploringly, "you have not read the letter—if you would but read the letter! Mistress Hewitson half promised that you would help me!"

Thus called upon, Ormiston ran his eyes over Henrietta's letter, which, concluding it to be on matters merely personal to himself, he had been reserving for more private, and therefore more satisfactory perusal.

Nellie watched him anxiously as he read on, and with a spasm of anguish at her heart she saw that, as he gradually took in the nature of its contents, his first look of eager joy disappeared, and was succeeded by one of deep and tender pity—pity which made itself felt in the very accents of his voice, as he exclaimed:

"Young Mistress Netterville! Good God! And I never even dreamed of the relationship! Alas! that you should have come so far, only to find sorrow and disappointment in the end."

"Oh! not dead! not dead!" cried Nellie, terrified by his words and looks. "Say, not dead—not dead—I do entreat you!"

"No, no!—not dead—yet," he answered nervously. He could not bring himself to say that she was to die upon the morrow.

"Nay, Major Ormiston," Roger here interposed, for Nellie was sobbing in speechless anguish, "if not dead all is well—or may at all events yet be well—for this most injured lady. I have hope still—hope in the honor and justice even of our enemy. See this paper! It was writ by the soldier who hath lately received as his share in the Irish spoil the house and lands of Netterville, and who is ready to aver on oath that he took it down word for word from the lips of the very woman who did that deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die."

Ormiston glanced rapidly over the papers which Roger had drawn from his bosom and given to him.

"Yes, yes!" he cried joyfully, "I doubt it not in the least. Sergeant Jackson is well known as a man of truth beyond suspicion, and these lines, moreover, do but repeat the defence which the unhappy lady urged over and over again upon her trial, insisting that the accusation against her was an act of private vengeance. But all this can be discussed hereafter. Time presses; and whatever is to be done to save her, must be done at once."

"The Lords Chief-Justices," suggested Roger; but Ormiston shook his head with a little smile of scorn.

"Little likely they to reverse a sentence pronounced in their own courts!" he said. "No, no! it is to the Lord-Deputy we must appeal. I will ride after him at once, and in a couple of hours at the furthest you may look for me with the result. I trust in God that it may be a good one."

He left the room without waiting for an answer, and in another minute they heard him gallop across the bridge. The next two hours were passed by Nellie in an agony of expectation which was painful to behold. She could not stay still a moment. Sometimes she paced the narrow guard-room with rapid and impatient footsteps—sometimes, regardless of the presence of the English soldiery, she flung herself on her knees, weeping and praying almost aloud in her agony. Every stir upon the bridge—every sound from the street beyond, seemed to announce the return of her messenger, and at these moments she would stand up, shivering from head to foot in such a fever of hope and fear, that Roger at last became seriously alarmed, and remonstrated firmly and affectionately with her on her want of self-command. At last, to his inexpressible relief, a bustle at the doorway announced Ormiston's return, and a moment afterward the latter entered the guardroom. Nellie stood up, as white as ashes, and utterly incapable of either speaking or moving toward him. Shocked at the mute anguish of her face, Ormiston took her hand in his; but when she looked at him, expecting him to address her, he hesitated, like one doubtful of the effect of the tidings he was bringing.

"For God's sake, speak at once!" cried Roger. "Anything is better for her than this suspense! Say, is it life or death?"

"Not death, certainly—at least I hope not," said Ormiston, vainly seeking in his own mind for some fitter words by which to convey his meaning.

The blood rushed to Nellie's temples, and the pupils of her eyes dilated, but still she could not answer.

"You hope?" Roger repeated sadly. He saw, though Nellie did not, that there still existed some uncertainty in the matter.

"There is a reprieve at all events," he said, in the same joyless tones in which he had before replied.

The color faded from Nellie's cheek, and the gladness from her eye. "Only a reprieve—only that," she muttered, in tones so hoarse and changed that the young men could hardly believe it to be hers—"only that!"

"But the rest will follow," said Ormiston, trying to reassure her. "The Lord-Deputy will himself inquire into the business, and—"

"Nay, then, she is safe indeed!" Nellie interrupted him to say. "With that confession, furnished by her chief accuser, her innocence must be clear as daylight. O sir! she is safe—surely she is safe!" she added, trying to reassure herself by the repetition of the word, and yet sorely puzzled by a something in Ormiston's eyes which looked more like pity than sympathy in her joy.

"Safe? I trust so—with all my heart and soul I trust so," he answered gravely. "Nevertheless, my dear young lady, I would counsel you, as a friend, not to suffer your hopes to soar too high, lest any after disappointment should be too terrible for endurance."

"If she is reprieved, she will be pardoned; and if she is pardoned, she will live," Nellie repeated slowly, like one trying yet dreading to discover the hidden meaning of his words.

"She will live," he amended gently; "yes, certainly, if God hath decreed it as well as man."

"Nay, if she is in God's hands only, I am content," said Nellie, with a sudden return to confidence, which somewhat astonished Ormiston. "I also have been in God's hands," she added, with an appealing look toward Roger, "and can tell how much more merciful they are than man's. Sir, I conclude from what you say that she is ailing; may I not go to her at once?"

"If you are strong enough," he was beginning, but she interrupted him with a burst of grief and indignation.

"How? not strong enough? and I have come all this way to see her! O mother, mother!" she sobbed convulsively, "little you dream your child is near, bringing peace and pardon to your prison!"

Roger saw that Ormiston knew more than he liked to tell, and asked in a low voice:

"The poor lady, then, is very ill?"

"Dying!" the other answered curtly.

"Will her daughter be in time to see her, think you?"

"In time; but that is all. She has burst a blood-vessel, as I have just now learned, and this reprieve seems little better than a mockery; for no one dreams that she could have survived for the tragedy of to-morrow."

"Then let Nellie go at once," said Roger promptly. "She has ridden night and day to see her mother, and sad as the meeting may be, it would be sadder still if they met no more. Let her go at once."

And so it was decided.

Newman's Poems.
BY H. W. Wilberforce

.

The little volume of poems published anonymously under this humble title, [Footnote 179] produced an impression immediately on its publication, not only among Catholics but among English readers in general, which could hardly have been caused by a volume of poems from any other writer of the day, with the exception, perhaps, of the Laureate. The explanation is to be found in the initials J. H. N. at the end of the preface—a signature long ago of world-wide celebrity.

[Footnote 179: Verses on Various Occasions. London: Burns, Gates & Co. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.]

There may be those who feel surprised to find that a man chiefly known as having been, under God's providence and grace, the main author of the Oxford movement of 1833, should be found to have possessed and exercised extraordinary poetical gifts. It may perhaps be partly a lurking feeling of envy, partly a just perception how rarely any one man combines numerous unconnected powers, which makes the world at large reluctant to admit that any man has greatly distinguished himself in a line far removed from that specially his own. But that feeling, be its origin what it may, does not in reason apply to the case before us, because it would seem that the gifts which specially qualify a man to produce a deep effect upon the hearts and consciences of his fellows, to be the founder and leader of any great school of thought, social, moral, political, or religious, are very much the same as those required for the making of a great poet.

This is at first sight so obvious, that we incline to think the only real argument against it would be, an appeal to experience. It will be said, there is a small class of men who have won among their fellows (as if it were a title of honor formally secured to them) the name of "the poet," and no one of them has been, except in his own special art of poetical composition, among the great leaders of human thought. But this is easily accounted for. A man immersed for years in public affairs of any kind, however richly his mind may have been stored with poetical images, and however natural it may have been to him to have sought for them a poetical expression, can rarely have had leisure to cultivate the merely artistic part of poetical composition to the degree necessary for success as a poet. It is hardly likely that in his case there should combine the many accidental circumstances necessary (over and above the possession of great poetical endowments) for the composition, publication, and general diffusion of any considerable poetical work. And even if all these should happen to meet, the mere fact of being very greatly distinguished in any other line is of itself, we strongly suspect, enough to prevent any man from being chiefly remembered as a great poet. The name of "the poet Cowper" is a household word in every English family. But if "William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple" (as his name stands on the title-page) had risen to the woolsack, we believe that, even though he might have written the same poems, he would never have gained the title. If indeed mediocrity in everything else had sufficed to gain a high and permanent reputation for a man of equal mediocrity in poetical talents, we should now have talked of Cowper's friend as "the poet Hayley." But that the highest poetical genius does not obtain the title for a man otherwise conspicuous, is proved by the example of Shakespeare. Merely because he has left behind him dramatic works to which the world affords no rival, not even the preeminent poetical genius shown in his poems has caused the world at large to speak and think of him as "the poet Shakespeare." Nor would Dryden, despite of his matchless lyric poems, have attained the title, if among his numerous plays he had written Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.

It seems to us that these considerations are enough to answer the objection from experience, which might perhaps be urged against our opinion, that the qualities which qualify a man to exercise a deep influence on his fellows and make him a leader of the souls of men, are in fact the same as those which qualify him for success as a poet.

We think this volume will convince most of those who read it that we are right. The weighty and touching thoughts of these poems bear the stamp of the same mint from which issued those volumes of sermons, which, far more than any other work, have impressed a permanent stamp upon the generation of English readers which is now tending, as Dr. Newman says of himself, "toward the decline of life." It is impossible to read them without feeling that, if his life had been one of mere literary leisure, his chosen employment would probably have been poetry. As it is, he has evidently resorted to it, not when he was thinking of others, but when he sought to relieve the fulness of his own soul. In this world he has written in prose; his poetry has been the record of his inner struggles and emotions, and has been written for himself and his God.

As long as any memory of the English nation and the English language remains among men. Dr. Newman, we doubt not, will be remembered and reverenced; not indeed as one of the few whom poetry has made great, but as one of the great men who have written poetry. And so far from deeming it strange that such should be the case with the great author of the movement of 1833, we, for our part, should have thought it strange if, in a man of the highest literary culture, the intense feelings in which that movement originated had not relieved themselves by poetical expression. We believe, indeed, that few if any great moral movements have taken place in which something more or less of the same kind has not been found. Perhaps the most remarkable exception was the change of religion in England in the sixteenth century; the leaders in which not only produced no great poetical work, but did not leave behind them so much as a hymn. This was a striking contrast, not only to the contemporary movement in Germany, and to that of the Methodists in the eighteenth century, but also to that of the earlier Lollards. The explanation, however, is not far to seek. Lord Macaulay says, "Ridley was perhaps the only person who had any important share in the English Reformation, who did not consider it as a mere political job." Now, attractive as jobbing is to many very clever men, it is hardly qualified to inspire any poetical afflatus. Cranmer was too busy getting what he could for himself, to be musing over poetical images. Besides, the Reformation in England appealed not so much to men's deeper feelings, as to their natural and reasonable dislike to have their property confiscated and themselves imprisoned, hanged, and cut up alive; and this last kind of appeal neither needed nor encouraged poetical powers.

To return to the volume before us, the poems were so evidently written only for the author himself that it is our signal good fortune that they have ever been published. The greater part of them first appeared in a series called the Lyra Apostolica, in many successive numbers of the British Magazine, edited by the late Hugh James Rose, in which several of Dr. Newman's earliest prose writings were originally published. It was afterward issued in the form of a small volume, the first edition of which appeared in 1836. By far the greater part of it was supplied by Dr. Newman; the other poems, by five of his intimate friends. [Footnote 180]

[Footnote 180: These were John Bowden, "with whom" (Dr. Newman writes in the Apologia) "I spent almost exclusively my undergraduate years." He died just before Dr. Newman became a Catholic. His two sons are now fathers in the London Oratory.—Hurrell, Froude, whose noble character and high gifts Dr. Newman has sketched with admirable force, truth, and beauty, in three pages of the Apologia, which he sums up by saying: "It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with admiration toward the Church of Rome, and in the same degree dislike the Reformation. He fixed on me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence." He died February 29th, 1836, "prematurely," says Dr. Newman, "and in the conflict and transition-state of opinion. His religious views never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their depth."—John Keble, the author of The Christian Year, of whom Dr. Newman writes (Apologia, edition i. p. 75) words expressing deep feelings shared by many who are now, by God's grace, members of the Catholic Church. He died in 1865, and at this moment, on his birthday, April 27th, the first stone of a new college at Oxford, erected as a testimonial to him, and bearing his name, is being laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury.—Robert Isaac Wilberforce, second son of William Wilberforce. From his earliest years his character seemed made up of truth, purity, unselfishness, tenderness of affection, and indefatigable diligence. As his great powers developed, they showed themselves perhaps the more remarkable from their combination with a degree of humility so extraordinary as to be his chief characteristic. After a university career of unusual distinction, he was elected fellow of Oriel College, on the same day with Hurrell Froude, with whom he is classed by Dr. Newman, in the Apologia, as one with whom he was, "in particular, intimate and affectionate." He became a country clergyman, and afterward archdeacon; and in 1838 published (in combination with the present Bishop of Oxford) the Life of William Wilberforce. His theological works were all of later date. It is characteristic that he always declared he would never have undertaken any of them if Mr. Newman had not left the field unoccupied. In the opinion of most persons, except himself, his equal in learning and ability was not then left in the Church of England. In 1854, he became a member of the Catholic Church, and died in 1857, while studying at Rome for the priesthood.—Isaac Williams was fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He remained much longer in Oxford, sharing Mr. Newman's intercourse and counsels. In 1840, Mr. Newman dedicated the beautiful volume on The Church of the Fathers "to my dear and much admired Isaac Williams, the sight of whom carries back his friends to ancient, holy, and happy times." He is, perhaps, best known by his published poems; but he has also published a series of devotional commentaries on the gospels, of great beauty and to which many are deeply indebted. He died in 1865. Dr. Newman went to visit him in his country retirement only a few days before. Our readers, we think, will feel an interest in this brief memorial of a group of men so closely connected with the collection in which many of these poems originally appeared.]

To these are added, in the present volume, a few of earlier and a good many of later date. All of them seem equally to have been composed without any view to publication, and considering that their illustrious author has always been remarkable for a dislike to put himself forward, and for an almost extreme susceptibility of feeling, some persons may wonder that he has ever been able to persuade himself to give them to the world. We do not share their wonder; for we long ago came to the conclusion that it is by men of the greatest natural reserve that the fullest confidences of their inner feelings are not unfrequently made. In the common intercourse of society such men display least of their real feeling. But being distinguished from others by the depth and strength of their thoughts and affections, more lasting convictions and emotions, and greater self-knowledge, they can, upon any call of duty, speak out most unreservedly and sincerely; and the pain it gives them to make any revelation of their inner selves is such that, to do it completely, costs them little, if anything, more than to speak of themselves at all. This, all the world sees, has been exemplified in the Apologia, and in its measure it has been the same with the Lyra Apostolica, and with the present volume. The poems in the Lyra were, nearly all of them, the expression of the thoughts which crowded into the mind of Dr. Newman during a tour in the Mediterranean, between December, 1832, and July, 1833. The present volume adds very greatly to their interest by giving the place and day of their composition. Thus, the poem headed "Angelic Guidance" was written on the day on which he left Oxford. In our days, in which a very few hours upon the Great Western takes Oxford men to Falmouth without trouble or fatigue, the date, "Whitchurch, December 3d, 1832," is interesting. Whitchurch is a somewhat dreary and secluded village, at which the direct road from Oxford to Southampton intersected the mail road from London to Exeter and Falmouth. There was in those days a coach to Southampton, to the top of which Mr. Newman mounted, (the present writer and other Oriel friends standing in the street, in front of the Angel Inn, to see the last of him.) Before midday he reached Whitchurch, and there had to wait till night for the Falmouth mail. We should be curious to know what has become of the large inn at Whitchurch which was maintained by this sort of traffic. It must long ago have been shut up. Mr. Newman's life had hitherto been almost entirely confined to one or two places, and now he was starting alone for distant lands, and began by waiting many hours at a lonely and (crede experto) sufficiently dreary inn. His thoughts turned to the guardian angel who, as he already believed, bore him company. The Apologia tells us how early in life his thoughts had run upon angels and their ministrations. He says of these lines: "They speak of 'the vision' that haunted me. That vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of these compositions." We need hardly say how much these circumstances add to the interest of the poem, which appeared in the Lyra without any explanation of the circumstances under which it was composed.

It is impossible to read these poems without feeling how much a man takes with him from home of the thoughts which are called out even by the most striking and memorable scene. The events going on in England—the evident decay of what he still believed to be the "reformed church"—formed the coloring medium through which he looked at all he saw. Thus, at sea, the day he left Gibraltar, he wrote the lines headed "England:"

"Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith's pure fame!
O trust not crafty fort, nor rock renown'd
Earn'd upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.

"Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime.
High towers have been man's crime.
Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,
Strongholds have been man's snare.
Thy nest is in the crags; ah! refuge frail!
Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.

"He who scann'd Sodom for his righteous men
Still spares thee for thy ten;
But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,
He will not pass thee by;
For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest,
So gives he them by turn, to suffer or be blest."

The Apologia tells us that the golden lines, "Lead, kindly light," were composed when the "orange-boat" in which the author sailed from Palermo to Marseilles was becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio. It is not mentioned, we think, that it was in the darkness of the night. They are here headed, "The Pillar of the Cloud:'

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene,—one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

"Off Algiers," in sight of the grave of that great African church which produced St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and Tertullian, is the date of "The Patient Church," in which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the writer, relying on the promise of Christ, looked forward to the ultimate victory of the church, and which begins:

"Bide thou thy time!
Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime;
Sit in the gate and be the heathen's jest.
Smiling and self-possest,
O thou, to whom is pledged a victor's sway,
Bide thou the victor's day!"

On December 28th, 1832, Mr. Newman caught his first sight of a Greek shore. It is highly characteristic that the first thought which it inspired to the most finished classical scholar of his day in Oxford, was not of Thucydides, not even of Homer, but of "the Greek fathers:"

"Let heathens sing thy heathen praise,
Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days
In my sad heart abides;
For sons of thine in truth's first hour.
Were tongues and weapons of his power.
Born of the Spirit's fiery shower.
Our fathers and our guides.

"All thine is Clement's varied page;
And Dionysius, ruler sage,
In days of doubt and pain;
And Origen with eagle eye;
And saintly Basil's purpose high
To smite imperial heresy,
And cleanse the altar's stain.

"From thee the glorious Preacher came,
With soul of zeal and lips of flame,
A court's stern martyr-guest;
And thine, O inexhaustive race!
Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace;
And royal-hearted Athanase,
With Paul's own mantle blest."

At Corfu, the narrative of Thucydides brought to his mind the thought which he worked out in the sermon on "The Individuality of the Soul," published six years later; and in which he says: "All who have ever gained a name in the world, all the mighty men of war that ever were, all the great statesmen, all the crafty counsellors, all the scheming aspirants, all the reckless adventurers, all the covetous traders, all the proud voluptuaries, are still in being, though helpless and unprofitable. Balaam, Saul, Joab, Ahitophel, good and bad, wise and ignorant, rich and poor, each has his separate place, each dwells by himself in that sphere of light or darkness which he has provided for himself here. What a view this sheds upon history! We are accustomed to read it as a tale or a fiction, and we forget that it concerns immortal beings who cannot be swept away, who are what they were, however this earth may change." The germ of that sermon is contained in the lines headed "Corcyra," January 7th, 1833.

The Lyra contains some beautiful and well-known lines:

"Did we but see,
When life first open'd, how our journey lay
Between its earliest and its closing day.
Or view ourselves as we one day shall be,
Who strive for the high prize, such sight would break
The youthful spirit, though bold for Jesus' sake.

"But thou, dear Lord!
While I traced out bright scenes which were to come,
Isaac's pure blessings, and a verdant home,
Didst spare me, and withhold thy fearful word;
Willing me year by year, till I am found
A pilgrim pale, with Paul's sad girdle bound."

They are headed, "Our Future. What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." It gives them a new interest to find that they were composed at Tre Fontane, the spot of the martyrdom of St. Paul.

The verses called "Day Laborers," composed while waiting at Palermo for a passage home, (as is described in the Apologia,) show the author's deep sense of having a work to do. They are headed, "And He said. It is finished:"

"One only, of God's messengers to man,
Finished the work of grace which he began;
......
List, Christian warrior! thou whose soul is fain
To rid thy mother of her present chain;—
Christ will avenge his bride; yea, even now
Begins the work, and thou
Shalt spend in it thy strength; but, ere he save,
Thy lot shall be the grave."

We have insisted on the peculiar value of the poems written during this short tour, (the only one of the kind in which the illustrious author has ever indulged himself,) because it adds a new and special interest to compositions which, even when published without any such interest, attained a wide and deserved celebrity. He seems at the time to have felt that that tour was to be the only distraction of the kind in a life of toil; and that he was enriching himself with images of beauty (worthy, as he says, in itself rather of angelic than mortal eyes) which were to last him for many a long year:

"Store them in heart! Thou shalt not faint
'Mid coming pains and fears.
As the third heaven once nerved a saint
For fourteen trial years."

That the remembrance has been fresh and keen, we see in the lines on "Heathen Greece" written in 1856, and first published in that exquisite volume Calista:

"Where are the islands of the blest?
They stud the AEgean sea;
And where the deep Elysian rest?
It haunts the vale where Peneus strong
Pours his incessant stream along,
While craggy ridge and mountain bare
Cut keenly through the liquid air.
And, in their own pure tints arrayed.
Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade.
And stand in beauty undecay'd.
Guards of the bold and free."

It is worth notice that the pregnant lines on "The Sign of the Cross" were written before the author left Oxford, and while he was as yet, as he expressly tells us, so ignorant of Catholic doctrine that even when waiting at Palermo, just before he returned home, he says: "I began to visit the churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the presence of the blessed sacrament there."

We might linger equally upon many poems which equally deserve it, but pass on to those written since the author was a Catholic. Among these are not to be reckoned the translations from the Latin Hymns of the Breviary, which were made "in 1836-8." There are a few which bear the date "Littlemore," a date full of touching recollections to the friends of the author. It is a hamlet locally separated from the parish of St. Mary's, of which he was vicar, but belonging to it. He had built a church there for the use of his parishioners, and retired there from time to time for his own as well as their benefit. When he gave up his connection with the Oxford movement, (as the Apologia shows,) he retired there altogether, and staid there till he became a Catholic in 1845. Of those written since the author became a Catholic the best known, probably, are "The Pilgrim Queen," and "The Queen of the Seasons." It is indeed cheering to find a great genius, who had so long been more or less crippled by the chill, stiff system of Anglicanism, opening out, like a flower beneath the spring sun—beneath the genial teaching of the Catholic Church:

"But I know one work of his infinite hand.
Which special and singular ever must stand;
So perfect, so pure, and of gifts such a store,
That even Omnipotence ne'er shall do more.

"The freshness of May, and the sweetness of June,
And the fire of July in its passionate noon.
Munificent August, September serene,
Are together no match for my glorious Queen.

"O Mary! all months and all days are thine own.
In thee lasts their joyousness, when they are gone;
And we give to thee May, not because it is best.
But because it comes first, and is pledge of the rest."

Apart from the freedom of thought which the author has gained from the Church, ("Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,") there seems to us an ease and flow about the very language and metre of these Catholic hymns which we do not find equalled in the author's earlier poems, sublime as are their conceptions. But it is remarkable that the poem which unites both these qualities in the highest measure, is that which was composed last, "The Dream of Gerontius." Like the others it seems to have been written for the author alone, and to have been published merely as an act of friendship to the editor of The Month. Is it too much to hope that the high sense of its exceeding depth and beauty which has been shown by the whole English world may not only encourage the author, as he tells us it did, to publish his collected poems in the volume before us, but to compose more? For it is plain that as yet at least his arms are not dimmed or his force abated.

"The Dream of Gerontius" begins with the thoughts of one who feels himself at the gate of death and the prayers of the assistants by his bedside. Then Gerontius says:

"Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.
The pain has wearied me. ... Into thy hands,
Lord, into thy hands. ..."

And the priest says the commendation. Then follows:

Soul Of Gerontius.

"I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed—
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself.
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes, some one softly said,
'He's gone;' and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Say, 'Subvenite;' and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low."
......

He does not yet know whether he is living or dead. Then he finds himself held,

"Not by a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being.
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say.
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
Oh! what a heart-subduing melody."

Then follow the songs of the guardian angel over the soul which he was set to tend. After a long while Gerontius takes courage and says:

Soul.

"I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord,
My guardian spirit, all hail!

Angel.

"All hail, my child!
My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?

......

Soul.

"I ever had believed
That on the moment when the struggling soul
Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell
Under the awful presence of its God,
There to be judged and sent to its own place.
What lets me now from going to my Lord?

Angel.

"Thou art not let; but with extremest speed
Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge;
For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
Divide a moment, as men measure time.
Into its million-million-millionth part.
Yet even less than that the interval
Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
Cried 'Subvenite,' and they fell to prayer;
Nor scarcely yet have they begun to pray."

We must not linger on the converse between the soul and its guardian angel, nor at the marvellous description of the demons in "the middle region," their impotent rage—impotent against one who has now no traitor within. Then he comes within the reach of the heavenly choirs. We have the hymns of the successive choirs. At length, as they approach "the veiled presence" of God, the soul hears again the voices it left on earth, for in that presence the voices of prayer are heard:

Soul.

"I go before my Judge. Ah! ....

Angel.

.... "Praise to his name!
The eager spirit has darted from my hold.
And, with the intemperate energy of love,
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;
But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
And circles round the Crucified, has seized.
And scorch'd, and shrivell'd it; and now it lies
Passive and still before the awful throne.
O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God.

Soul.

"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be.
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,
There will I sing my sad, perpetual strain.
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its sole peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and love;—
Take me away.
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see him in the truth of everlasting day."

Then follow the words of the angel, and those of the souls in purgatory. At length the angel concludes:

"Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.

"Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear.
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."

Any one who has read this wonderful poem will complain that we have omitted this, and this, and this, which especially deserved to be quoted. It is most true. It would be impossible to give any idea of its matchless weight and beauty, except by transcribing the whole of it; and we have wished only to give a sample which may direct to it the attention of any reader to whom it may yet be unknown.

The preface contains a dedication of the volume of Mr. Badeley, one of Dr. Newman's Oxford friends and followers, who before this time knows far more of that world of spirits than even the gifted eye of the most illustrious seer has ever pierced; for he had hardly received this dedication when he received his summons to it. He was the son of a Protestant physician at Colchester, who, many years ago, was the medical adviser of a convent in that neighborhood, and created a good deal of suspicion among his fellow religionists, by bearing testimony to the supernatural nature of a cure of one of the nuns who was his patient. Mr. Badeley himself graduated with high honors at Oxford in 1823, and afterward studied the law, in which he attained a high reputation and great success. He directed his special attention to ecclesiastical questions, and hardly any case connected with them came before the courts in which he was not retained. In this preface Dr. Newman bears testimony to the fidelity with which he followed the religious movement in which the volume originated from first to last. He was counsel to the Bishop of Exeter in the celebrated Gorham case, and his argument upon it was published in a pamphlet which attracted much notice. He also published a book against the alteration of the law of marriage. At last a new light shone upon his path; he followed it faithfully, and it led him into the Catholic Church. He was, perhaps, the only lawyer from whom was actually accepted, on his conversion to the church, a sacrifice of his worldly interests, nearly equal to that made by many Protestant clergymen. The loss of practice has no doubt been risked by all who have become Catholics; by him, owing to the nature of his principal business, it was in a great measure incurred, nor did he ever recover what he had lost. But the time is short. It is but a few weeks since he was cheered by Dr. Newman's words, "We are now both of us in the decline of life; may that warm attachment which has lasted between us inviolate for so many years, be continued, by the mercy of God, to the end of our earthly course, and beyond it;"—and his earthly course is already over; the sacrifice is gone by. He is now able to estimate its real value.

Sonnet.

Sharp lightnings flash, tempestuous thunders roll:
I shudder—and yet wherefore? For the dead
Sleep undisturbed in consecrated bed.
And thou, who didst yield up thy sweet, young soul
So mildly to thy Maker, and console.
By dying acts, the hearts which love thee best,
Must, even on this first night, sublimely rest
In thy still sepulchre, by yon green knoll.
Yet one, I know, will tremble as she hears
The storm above her darling; and each dart
Of the forked lightning will to anguish start
A legion of dread shapes and tender fears;
For who can sound the fountains of her tears,
Choice instincts, lodged in her maternal heart?

The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. [Footnote 181]

[Footnote 181: Concilii Plenarii Secundi Baltimorensis, Acta et Decreta. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.]

The good city of Baltimore witnessed, in October, 1866, the most numerous and imposing ecclesiastical assemblage ever gathered in the United States. Forty-seven archbishops and bishops, with two mitred abbots, convened in Plenary Council, under the presidency of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore, delegate of the Apostolic See. For two weeks they met daily in consultation, their labors being interrupted only by the solemn sessions prescribed by the Pontifical. After a free but harmonious interchange of ideas, they adopted practical resolutions, which they embodied partly in decrees, partly in petitions to the Holy See. Their work done, it was not published to the world, but sent to the mother and mistress of all churches for revision, correction if necessary, and final recognition or approval. And now, almost two years after the celebration of the Council, the ACTS and DECREES, as revised and approved by the Holy See, are published under the authority of the same most reverend prelate that as delegate apostolic had presided over the deliberations of the council. The work is thus complete: the new legislation takes its appropriate place in our canon law; an epoch is marked in the history of the American church.

From the beginning of the church, the celebration of councils has been looked on as a most efficient means, under God, of preserving discipline, arriving at proper conclusions on practical matters, and promoting the common good. The very first question that arose in the infant Christian community was decided in the Council of Jerusalem, where the apostles and the ancients consulted together. Every succeeding age saw councils meet to decide ecclesiastical questions. Indeed, the history of the church may be said to be a history of councils. Gradually, as ecclesiastical discipline assumed regular outlines, and was settled according to fixed rules, proper arrangements were made for the regular meeting of prelates for consultation and mutual consolation and enlightenment. It would be foreign to the purposes of this paper to dwell on the ancient discipline in this regard; but a short exposition of the actual law and practice of the church will enable the reader properly to appreciate the importance of the work of the late Plenary Council.

The Council of Trent (Sess. xxiv. De Reform, c. 2) decreed that the ancient practice of holding councils should be renewed, and fixed a regular period for their celebration. Each archbishop was to call his suffragans together every three years, and these were strictly obliged to obey the summons. The object of these meetings was "to regulate morals, correct excesses, settle controversies and do all other things permitted by the sacred canons." St. Charles Borromeo celebrated several such councils, which were not only productive of immense good to the church of Milan, but have remained as a pattern on which the proceedings of all subsequent councils have been modelled. But councils of bishops were not in favor with the civil rulers, whose aim it was to fetter, and, if possible, to enslave the church. They prevented the execution of the salutary decree of Trent, which, with a few exceptions, remained almost a dead letter from the time of St. Charles to the present century. To the church of the United States belongs the credit of having revived the custom of holding councils. Not long after the establishment of the hierarchy, the first Provincial Council of Baltimore was convened, and was followed in regular succession by others, held every three years, according to the prescriptions of the fathers of Trent. When new archiepiscopal sees were erected, Rome, anxious that the American church should retain as far as possible a uniform discipline, suggested the holding every ten years of a plenary council, to be composed of all the bishops of the various ecclesiastical provinces of the country, under the presidency of a delegate to be nominated by the Holy See. Accordingly, the Most Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick, of illustrious memory, then Archbishop of Baltimore, was appointed delegate apostolic, and convened the first plenary council in his metropolitan church, in May, 1852. The second should have been held in 1862, but the civil war then raging made it necessary to defer it. As soon as peace was restored, measures were taken to convene the prelates, and, as we have seen, the council was actually held in 1866.

The title "plenary" sounds odd to some ears, and has, if we remember aright, provoked some little discussion in the public prints. The term national is frequently given to the council in common parlance, and would probably have been its official title also but for the caution of the Holy See. Rome, enlightened by wisdom from above and rich with the experience of ages, looks on a tendency to nationalism in the church as one of the greatest dangers that can arise, almost, indeed, as the forerunner of schism. When she was about to propose to the American prelates the decennial convening of a council of all the bishops of the various provinces of the country, the question of the official title at once arose. National was not liked, general was too ample, provincial too restricted. A learned ecclesiastical historian suggested plenary, the title given to the general councils of the African church in the fifth century—councils rendered famous by the genius of St. Augustine, and their explicit condemnation of Pelagianism. The title was adopted. It avoids the narrowness of nationalism, while it fully expresses the idea of a full council of all the prelates of the American church.

The object of a plenary council is plainly indicated by the Holy See. Strictly speaking, provincial councils could provide all the necessary legislation. But there would be danger of a loss of uniformity. Even among the best persons, the old adage, that where there are many men there are many minds, is verified. To prevent this divergence of views from manifesting itself too much in practice, it has been deemed advisable to call occasionally all the bishops together, that their united counsels may adopt such measures as will keep the American church one not only in faith and in the essential points of discipline, but even in the principal among the secondary matters of the latter branch. It is not necessary to descant on the advantages of such uniformity. The faithful, if they do not expect it, are at least edified and consoled by it; and, for the great purposes which the church is called on to carry out in this country, it brings into practical effect, as far as is possible, the great motto, Viribus unitis. To gain it were well worth the sacrifice even of fond predilections and of cherished usages.

The plenary council, then, is to look to the wants of the whole American church, and to do for it what a provincial council does for an ecclesiastical province. Canon law is necessarily couched in general terms, and cannot be applied in the same way everywhere. A great portion of it, in fact, consists of decisions given for particular localities under peculiar circumstances, of which the principle only is or can be of general application. It thus happens not infrequently that the general regulations have to be modified to meet other wants, other times, other circumstances. This is one of the first duties of local councils. They propose, and, with the approval of the supreme pastor, enact those regulations to which their wisdom and experience may point as necessary to carry out the real spirit of the general law. In these they do not contradict, much less abrogate; on the contrary, they enforce the observance of the canons. We know there is an impression abroad that "canon law does not oblige in this country;" but a more erroneous or more mischievous idea could scarcely have been propagated. If it be said that all the circumstances contemplated by the canons do not exist here, and that such laws as presuppose these circumstances are not, on that account, applicable here, the proposition is correct; but, if it be said that the law itself does not oblige, the proposition is simply monstrous. We do not know whom it would affect worse, the higher or the lower orders of the clergy, the religious or the seculars. All would be very much in the same position; all would soon be glad to return to the reign of law. If "canon law does not oblige in this country," what becomes of the impediments of matrimony? Where do the religious orders find the charter of their privileges? On what does an aggrieved clergyman rely for the right of appeal? Where is the proof that every Christian of either sex, that has come to the years of discretion, is obliged to approach worthily, at least once a year at Easter, the holy sacrament of the blessed eucharist? The origin of the erroneous idea appears to be, that, the organization of the church in this missionary country not being yet completed, certain privileges, generally granted by the Holy See, have been withheld; and, as one case may easily occur to the clerical reader, we shall take the liberty of using it to exemplify our meaning. The nomination, institution, and consecration of bishops are inherently and radically the exclusive right of the Holy See. No matter by whom it may have been exercised at any time, if it was not in virtue of a permission expressly or tacitly granted by the successor of St. Peter, the exercise was a schismatical act. This no Catholic can deny. By canon law the right of presentation of three names to the pope has been granted, not to all the clergy of the diocese, but to the cathedral chapter, a body in the composition of which the diocesan clergy, by the same law, exercised but little influence. In this country there are no cathedral chapters; in fact, it is impossible thus far to erect them according to the canons. The right of presentation of the three names has been accorded by Rome to the bishops of the province instead. This is an instance in which a privilege granted by the canons to a body which has no existence among us has been transferred by the supreme authority to another body that can exercise it. We are not now either blaming or praising the arrangement; that would be beyond our province. We are merely stating what the law is, and endeavoring to help to dispel an error which may be, if it has not been, productive of evil. As canon law, then, does oblige in this country, numerous questions must necessarily arise in the application of its ordinances to our circumstances and wants. The whole social fabric here is very different from that of Europe when the decretals were issued. It thus becomes necessary to adopt such measures as may save the principle of the law, and, at the same time, avoid the inconvenience of a too literal understanding. This is one of the first and most important works of a council. It involves a patient and careful study of the law; a thorough knowledge of the circumstances of the country; a prudent foresight, which may be able to discern what measure is most likely to be practically successful. We may instance the question of the tenure of church property. If there were in practice real religious freedom among us, if the church were allowed to hold her property according to her own laws, there would be no difficulty. The actual canon law would provide for the security of the tenure, for the good use of any revenues that might accrue, and for any rights or legitimate influence the donors might reasonably expect to be allowed. But, at least in most of the states, the wisdom of the legislature has interfered, simply to prevent the Catholic Church from executing her own long-tried, satisfactory laws on the subject. To save the vital principle, the security and the independence of church property, it has been necessary to adopt various expedients, which may be, we do not doubt are, the best that could be devised under the circumstances, but, considered in themselves, are far from satisfactory. They, of course, are only temporary; and it is ardently to be desired that the time will soon come when wiser civil legislation will permit the execution of the mild and equitable provisions of the canons.

It is easy to see that a wide field is thus opened for the wisdom and industry of the fathers of a plenary council. But "the correction of abuses" is also expressly assigned by the decree of Trent as one of the objects of their labors. To err is human, and it is only too easy to fall away from the strict observance of the canons. Such has ever been the experience of the church. In this country, thank God, positive abuses are rare, if they exist at all. There is a general desire to become acquainted with the law of the church and to observe it as closely as circumstances will allow. But necessity has, in the past, introduced many customs which no longer have its sanction or excuse. Yet it is found hard sometimes to leave the old paths and take the broad highways of the canons or the rubrics. Sometimes doubts arise as to whether the exceptions formerly allowed are still permitted. Thus, there is ample matter for wise and cautious legislation, neither so lax as to allow abuses to grow up, nor so strict as, by substituting the letter for the spirit, to make the law kill rather than give life.

There must of necessity arise in the course of time many most important practical questions, which can be nowhere better decided than in council. Mutual advice, comparing of ideas, and discussion naturally lead to wise conclusions. In a country like ours, where so many cases arise which are without precedent, the necessity of frequent counsel among the prelates is obvious. And doubtless the regular celebration of councils has contributed greatly to that success which has especially marked the external government of the church in America. Fewer mistakes have been made here, perhaps, than anywhere else in the same time, while the successes have been great, nay, brilliant. The wisdom of the old has been handed down to the young; the experience of one generation has been used for the benefit of that succeeding; and there has been an uninterrupted unity of practical views from the days of Carroll to the present. Thus, England, Dubois, Bruté, Kenrick, Hughes, though dead, still live. Not merely their works remain behind them, but their spirit still speaks in the halls of the archiepiscopal residence, and in the sanctuary of the metropolitan church of Baltimore.

Another special duty has been assigned by the Holy See to our American councils—that of proposing the erection of new episcopal sees, and the names of candidates to fill either them or the older ones that may be canonically vacant. The erection of new sees is a special feature of the church in new countries. Every council of Baltimore has proposed the creation of new bishoprics, and, in most cases, the propositions have been favorably considered by the Holy See. The growth of the church can thus be traced through the acts of the various councils, and the steps can be counted, one by one, by which, from one bishop at Baltimore, the American hierarchy has progressed to its present development. Its growth has been more rapid than even the material progress of the country; and as we look at the far West, sure to become the happy home of millions of Catholics, imagination is scarcely bold enough to call up the numbers by which the bishops will be counted in future councils. We have already alluded to the duty of selecting candidates to fill episcopal sees. It is an important and a difficult task, requiring the exercise of some of the highest qualities that should be possessed by those who are, in the highest sense, "rulers of men." The Holy See has been so impressed with its importance and difficulty that it has earnestly urged that the bishops of the province should meet every time that there is a see to be filled. When, however, the vacancy occurs about the time of a council, or when the fathers ask for the erection of new sees, the question of candidates to be recommended must be considered in its sessions.

From this cursory glance at the work of a plenary council, it will be seen that the two weeks given to the celebration of the one lately held could have been by no means a time of rest. On the contrary, the conscientious performance of this work required the employment of every available moment. Every preceding council of Baltimore had devoted itself to the attainment of the different objects which we have indicated. The measures adopted were timely and wise, and the legislation forms the groundwork of our particular church law. Nor will we wonder at the success attained when we think of the great names that adorned those councils, of the illustrious prelates whose learning, prudence, foresight, zeal, and piety instructed and edified the past generation, and laid the broad and solid foundations on which the grand structure of the American church is rising. All honor to these great men! They were "men of great power, and endued with their wisdom, ... ruling over the present people, and by the strength of wisdom instructing the people in most holy words. Let the people show forth their wisdom, and the church declare their praise." But the American church had grown out of its infancy, and it was time to commence to build on the foundations so deeply and so skilfully laid. It would have been impossible, even had any one desired it, merely to re-enact in the second plenary council what had been done before—merely to pass a few general decrees, recommend the erection of new sees, provide for the filling of them and of those already existing and vacant by apostolic authority, and then separate. Had the council confined itself to this, it would have failed of performing its allotted work. These considerations had their due weight with the most reverend prelate, who most fitly was chosen for the high and important office of delegate apostolic. He determined upon a comprehensive plan, the execution of which by the council should, by meeting one of the chief present wants, impress its celebration and its work in indelible characters on the history of the American church. As early as April, 1866, this plan had been distributed to the archbishops and bishops, the heads of religious orders, and all others who of right were to be present at the council. He next convoked a body of theologians to initiate the preparatory studies. They were taken from the religious orders as well as from the secular clergy; many of them were or had been professors of theology or canon law; some were favorably known for high offices they had already held or for well-deserved reputation for learning. The coetus met daily as long as the greater part of its members could remain in Baltimore, and in that time the main points were gone over carefully and thoroughly, and the recommendations of the theologians thereon submitted to the most reverend archbishop. Some divines who could not be present sent their contributions in writing, so that we do not say too much when we assert that the best talent of the country was employed in these initial steps. The many occupations, however, in which the greater part of the coetus were engaged at home rendered a protracted stay of all impossible, and the remainder of the work was necessarily confided to a fewer number. The most reverend delegate apostolic, himself a most indefatigable worker, watched over all the proceedings. Every paper was submitted to his final revision before it went to the printer. Indeed, as he was the promoter, so he was in reality the principal of the laborers in the great work, to which he brought learning, improved by conference; judgment, matured not only by age, but by long practice in every branch of the ministry; a ready pen, whose labors, in other departments, for the cause of our holy religion, had already procured for him a high and well-deserved reputation. And we are sure his colleagues will not blame us if we say that, under and after the archbishop, Very Rev. James A. Corcoran, D.D., of the diocese of Charleston, deserves to be especially remembered for his industry, his erudition, his talents. The graceful style in which so many of the decrees are couched is so peculiarly his own that it can never be mistaken; and it will make the second plenary council remarkable for what, perhaps, would scarcely be expected in this remote country—a Latinity that would grace even the most finished documents that come from Rome herself. The work thus went on until the drafts of the decrees formed a large volume, which, for greater convenience, was printed. The inspection and the examination of it by the fathers and the theologians of the council were thus rendered more easy; indeed, it would be difficult to conceive how, without this preparation, the work could have been done at all.

As each bishop was entitled to bring two theologians, there was a very large attendance of the clergy of the second order. To these must be added many vicars-general, the heads of religious orders, and the superiors of the greater seminaries. All these clergymen were divided into congregations, after the pattern of the Milan councils of St. Charles Borromeo. Each congregation was presided over by a bishop, with a vice-president and a notary. This last officer kept a minute of the proceedings of the congregation, and drew up its final report. The whole matter of the proposed decrees was distributed among these congregations, and thus the preparatory work was subjected to a searching, minute investigation. It may be here interesting to the general reader to give a short account of the mode in which the business of a council is managed. We learn from the acts that there were four different meetings at the Second Plenary Council:

1. Private congregations.
2. Public congregations.
3. Private sessions.
4. Public sessions.

The "private congregations" were the meetings of the committees or congregations of theologians, each in a separate room. The "public congregations" were held in the cathedral, and there assisted at them all the "synodales" that is, all who had a right to be present at the synod, from the Most Reverend President to the youngest theologian. At these congregations the theologians "had the floor," the bishops confining themselves to asking questions, or proposing difficulties. The "private sessions" were meetings of the prelates alone. The officers of the council were also present, but merely to record the acts. The work of the council was really done in these private sessions. In them the decrees were passed, and the acts show that there were a close scrutiny and a thorough investigation of the measures proposed. The "public sessions" were solemn ceremonies in the cathedral. After pontifical high Mass, the decrees already passed were solemnly read and promulgated. They thus became a law as far as the action of the council could make them such. All that they needed was the approval of the Holy See.

In this manner the decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore were prepared, examined, discussed, matured, until now they are published as the law of the American church. In looking over them one is astonished at the variety of matter on which they treat. Faith, and the errors opposed to it now so prevalent, the church and her government, the primacy of the Roman pontiff, the powers, rights, and duties of archbishops and bishops, the rights and duties of the clergy, church property, the sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass, and all the proper conducting of divine worship, uniformity in the celebration of festivals, and other points of discipline, the status of religious, the education of youth, good books, the Catholic press, zeal for the salvation of souls, the spiritual welfare of the blacks, secret societies—these are some of the subjects which, as even a cursory examination shows us, are treated in these decrees. These are, indeed, what the original plan intended them to be. They give a clear and lucid exposition of canon law as adapted by authority to the circumstances of this country. They supply a want long felt, and they will remain for all time to come the guide and the rule of action of all ecclesiastics, from the hoary missionary bowed down with age and labors to the young priest whose elastic step leads him joyously from the seminary walls to his first appointment, from the mitred prelate to the humblest of the great army of missionaries that are bringing to our countrymen the good tidings of peace. They are clear and comprehensive; they were carefully prepared, every quotation, even though it were of a few words, was verified; and they are in every sense authoritative. Prescinding altogether from their binding force, they were carefully prepared originally; next, they were literally sifted by the theologians of the council; afterward they were discussed, and sometimes modified by the fathers; lastly, they were subjected to the scrutiny of Roman theologians, and were finally approved with very few emendations. They have thus undergone the trial of a threefold criticism, and deserve proportionate attention and respect. But, what is far more important, they are binding as laws, and the S. Congregation de Propaganda Fide has expressed its wish that they be faithfully observed by all whom it may concern. They have been, moreover, made by authority the text of a course of canon law in our ecclesiastical seminaries. The future clergy of the country are thus to be formed on them. To the volume that contains them they are afterward to look for enlightenment and instruction in the performance of the duties of the ministry. Nothing more need be, indeed little more could be, said in their praise.

The Acts and Decrees have been published in a goodly volume, in imperial octavo, by the well-known firm of John Murphy & Co., Baltimore. We need not say that the material part of the book is highly creditable to the publishers. The good quality of the paper, letter-press, and binding is commensurate with the importance of the work and the magnitude of the occasion which brought it forth. The volume contains all the official documents, from the first letter of Rome appointing Archbishop Spalding delegate apostolic, to the last communication of the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda in regard to the decisions of the Holy See. A copious and well-arranged index gives access to the mass of matter scattered through the work, thus rendering as easy as possible a reference to any given point. We congratulate Mr. Murphy on the honor done him by the privilege of placing his imprint on the title-page of so great and important a publication. It is a fitting reward for many services rendered to Catholic literature through a long and useful business career.

We hail this volume as the beginning of a new period in our American church, the period—detur venia verbo—of the reign of law. It marks an improvement, a step in advance, a progress. But the progress is legitimate, because it commenced where all such movements must commence, if they be Catholic, with the proper authority. A work begun, carried on, and brought to completion as this has been, is—we need not say—a safe guide; and one for which, we may be permitted to add, every lover of our holy religion should feel deeply grateful to those through whose zeal and labors it has been accomplished. By it this young church now takes her place with the most ancient and best regulated churches of the Old World: a light is given to our feet, lest inadvertently we stumble in the darkness: a sure guide is afforded, alike to young and old, to prelate and subject, to cowled monk and surpliced priest.

Translated From The French.
An Italian Girl Of Our Day.

Concluded.

To any one who has read this sweet and pious correspondence I need not point out how strongly toward the end it inclines to heaven. Was it a presentiment of death? It may have been. We cannot deny to certain souls the grace of having heard from afar the call of God. For me, I think I see in this case the natural movement of a very pure love in a lofty soul. There are souls that see God everywhere. She of whom I speak was one of these, and, from her infancy, all that was beautiful on earth had been for her but a veil designed to temper the brightness of the Eternal Beauty. Thus in the new and unknown regions of earthly love, through the first wonder and the first dreams, she soon found again the divine countenance; but this time more radiant than ever, more vivid, more irresistible; and that chaste flight which had carried her to the hopes of earth passed beyond and bore her away to heaven.

That a person has not had the happiness to feel this heavenly attraction, is no reason that he should either wonder at it or attempt to deny it. It is in the logic of our heart, and I believe there are few souls that in various degrees have not felt its power. It was known to ancient philosophy, whose greatest glory it is to have expressed by the mouth of Plato, its king, the progression of love from bodies and from souls to ideas and to God; and St. Augustine, who bore in his heart the gospel of Jesus Christ, has not rejected this part of the ancient heritage. Who has not read that conversation at Ostia, in which two holy souls, beginning with the love that united them on earth, came at last to touch heaven? "We were speaking sweetly together, ... and whilst we converse and look up to heaven, we reach it with the whole aspiration of our heart." [Footnote 182] It is this soaring, this upward flight that I speak of; this it is, I believe, which carried the soul of the saintly young bride to the desire of that eternal region where all desires are satisfied.

[Footnote 182: St. Augustine's Confessions.]

The heavenly instinct had not deceived her. Two days after that on which she wrote the last letter we have given, a death-bearing blast was breathed upon her, and she was seized with a slight fever which at first gave no uneasiness except to the ever-anxious heart of a mother. Yet on the very first day she had said to her, "Take my little desk and keep it in memory of me." These words were startling, coming from a person so clear-sighted. The illness suddenly assumed an alarming character, and the physicians recognized it as the miliary fever, a terrible epidemic which was then desolating Tuscany, and which seemed to pick out only choice victims. The young patient had divined her danger; she at once asked for the sacraments, and received with a humble and tender love the last visit of that Saviour whose blood never fails us, from our cradle, which it sanctifies, to our death-bed, where it strengthens and consoles us.

The patient now felt herself better. "Great and happy day!" she said; "if I am restored to health, never shall I forget it. What strength there is in the holy viaticum! My dear mother, how sweet and consoling is our religion! Ah! believe me, if any one feared death, he could do so no longer after having received the blessed Eucharist." Then she called her betrothed. "Gaetano," she said, "if it is the good pleasure of God to unite us on earth, he will restore me; but if he has other designs in our regard, then, my Gaetano, we must be resigned and adore his holy will, must we not?" The young man could not answer.

She continued: "In my English prayer-book there is an act of thanksgiving for the reception of the holy viaticum: take the book and read it to me." And a voice, tremulous with sorrow, began to read the following admirable prayer:

"Glory and thanksgiving be to thee, O Lord! who in thy sweetness hast been pleased to visit my poor soul. Now let thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.

"Now thou art come to me, I will not let thee go; I willingly bid farewell to the world, and with joy I go to thee, my God.

"Nothing more, O dear Jesus! nothing more shall separate me from thee: in thee I will live, in thee I will die, and in thee I hope to abide for ever.

"I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ; for Christ is my life, and to die will be my gain.

"Now I will fear no evils, though I walk in the shadow of death, because thou art with me, O Lord! As the hart pants after the fountains of water, so does my soul after thee: my soul thirsts after the fountain of living water. Oh! when shall I come and appear before the face of my God?

"Give me thy blessing, O divine Jesus! and establish my soul in everlasting peace; such peace as only thou canst give; such peace as it may not be in the power of my enemy to destroy.

"Oh! that my soul were at rest in thy happiness, and in the enjoyment of thee, my God, for ever!

"What more have I to do with the world? And in heaven what have I to desire but thee, my God?

"Into thy hands I commend my spirit. Receive me, sweet Jesus! In thee may I rest; and in thy happiness rejoice without end. Amen."

When the reader's voice had ceased, the young patient wished to take some repose. But she still seemed collected, and continued to pray.

Her brother was expected to arrive from Florence. "Settle the room," she said to her mother, "and put back upon my table the things that were taken off it when it was prepared for an altar. I do not wish that poor Antonio should perceive, on entering, that I have received the last sacraments; but remember, dear mother, always look upon that little table as a sacred thing, for it has borne the body of Jesus Christ." All that day she held her mother's hand, and spoke of nothing but the happiness of having received the holy communion. Toward evening she remembered that she was to have visited such and such poor persons that day. This thought troubled her, and she could be calmed only by the assurance that before night some one should carry to those poor persons their accustomed succor. From this time she began to converse with Jesus Christ, speaking to him with an ardor which the violence of her sufferings rendered more intense. "O Jesus! this bed seems to me of fire—but no, I will not complain. Thou willest that I should serve thee in suffering, and in suffering I will serve thee. Thou knowest that I should not grieve to die if my death did not cause such great affliction to those who love me. If thou seest that I should make a good Christian wife, I would say, 'O Lord! heal me!' But what is it that I am asking? No, not my will, but thine be done!" In the middle of the night, seeing her mother's shadow still bending over her pillow, she exclaimed, "O the heroic love of mothers!" She thought so much of the least things that were done for her. "My poor father," she said, "how good he is; what care he takes of me; for my sake he deprives himself entirely of sleep. He has called in three physicians, and he wishes one of them to remain night and day near my room. It is too much, my God! Mother, what say you of my Gaetano? Ah! now indeed I feel how happy I should have been with him; for the more I know him, the more I feel that he loves me, as you love me." She asked to have prayers recited by her bedside, and began herself in a low tone the prayers for the agonizing. Her mother interrupted her. "Rosa, my child, why these sorrowful prayers? You will recover, my child; do not always be thinking of death." She answered, "Ah! but if all day I have not been able to think of anything but death; if Jesus wishes to take me, must I not be ready?" She suffered terribly; one moment nature prevailed, and she uttered a complaint. Her betrothed said to her, "Rosa, think of what our Lord suffered." "Thanks, Gaetano; ah! how that thought consoles me!"

The dawn of the following morning only brought an accession of the malady. Three skilful physicians saw all their efforts powerless against its violence. One of them, who loved Rosa as his own child, wept. The patient became delirious. "Let us go! let us go!" she cried; "dear mother, adieu! my home is not here, my home is above! Let us go! let us go! adieu!" She repeated these words, sometimes in French, sometimes in Italian. She called her father, when he was absent, talking to him as if she saw him beside her; when he was present, looking for him and calling him still. She wept over the misfortunes of a poor widow whom in her dreams she saw left destitute; the next moment it was a little orphan that she cradled in her arms, and that drew tears from her eyes. Nothing could calm her delirium, which was still full of these charitable memories and images. At one time she seemed to see the ladder of Jacob, and she exclaimed: "But I—am I pure enough to go up with these angels? may I go forward? may I join their choirs, I who was preparing for earthly espousals?" She then recovered her consciousness, and asked for a chapter of the Flowerets of St. Francis on holy perseverance, during the reading of which she cried out suddenly, as if struck with horror, "O the evil spirits! the evil spirits!" Her mother hastened to her, threw her arms round her, and pressed her to her heart, saying, "Listen to your mother, Rosa, my dear child. Why these cries? why these terrors? You need not fear the evil spirits, my child; and they are not devils that surround your bed, but the angels of heaven. Have you not always loved God? have you not loved the poor? have you not been a good and obedient child?" But her countenance grew stern. "Hush," she said, "tempt me not to pride." And her face was overspread with the shadow of a profound and austere humility.

Her delirium returned, and now with a violence that neither words nor remedies could calm. As a last resource, her mother said to her, "Rosa, my child, I am quite exhausted. If you could calm yourself a little, I might lean my head on your hands and sleep. Calm yourself, my child, for my sake." And saying this, she affected to fall asleep. From that moment the poor child was silent; love was stronger than delirium.

A long stupor followed; an ivory paleness overspread her features; the veil of death was upon her brow. The victim was ready. But there is no victim without sacrifice, and no sacrifice without pain. Jesus trembled and wept, and was sorrowful even unto death in the Garden of Gethsemane. The hour of cruel sacrifice was come for this young Christian. She felt the cold iron of the sword, but again divine love remained victorious. Suddenly she wakes, opens her large, terrified eyes, while the blood rushing from her heart in an impetuous tide, crimsons her face and lights up her eye. She seems to come out of a dream, and now for the first time to understand all. "It must be, then!" she cried, "it must be! I must die! I must leave my father's house! I must leave my betrothed! No, no! I am to live with him, I am to make him happy!" A flood of tears bathed her countenance; a cry of anguish burst from her soul. "Adieu, Gaetano, adieu! we shall see each other no more!" It was a terrible struggle in that poor heart. The joyous preparations for her wedding had suddenly given place to the dismal preparations for the grave. The bride seemed to entwine her dying fingers in her nuptial wreath and to clasp it convulsively—but, if it be God's will?

Her mother put to her lips a picture of our Lady of Good Counsel, which the young girl had near her bed. Instantly she became calm, joined her hands, bowed her head, and remained perfectly silent. What was passing at that moment in the superior part of that beautiful soul? The eye of God alone, infinitely holy, can read such secrets. What we know is that, after this long silence, the dying girl pronounced in a clear, firm voice, the words, "Thy will be done." And from that moment the name of Gaetano was never upon her lips.

She recited the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. At the invocation, "Gate of heaven, pray for us," she pressed her mother's hand and smiled. Did she then see the eternal gates opening?

The Prior of San Sisto, her confessor, was by her bedside. She asked for extreme unction, and answered distinctly to all the prayers. An extraordinary grace of peace and resignation seemed from that moment to have entered her soul. She needed consolation no longer; it was she who now consoled and encouraged all around her. Her poor mother, wild with grief, threw herself upon her bosom. "I still hope," she said, sobbing; "yes, my Rosa, I still hope that you will recover; but if this be not God's will, oh! pray to him, supplicate him to call me also to himself. I will not, I cannot live without you!" But Rosa said, "No, mother, you must not wish for death. You have too many duties to accomplish upon earth; remember the mother of the Machabees." Then stretching out her hand and laying it on the head of the sorrow-stricken woman, she said, "I bless her who has so often blessed me! O Blessed Virgin! change the sorrow of this poor mother into the consolation of the poor, the afflicted, and the sick; and do thou, O my God! grant that we may all adore unto the end thy holy decrees." She drew from her finger a little ring, and said to her mother, "Keep that in remembrance of me;" and placing in her hands the ring of her betrothal, she said, "Give that to—you know whom—it is a noble soul." But she spoke not his name.

The end drew near; her family and friends surrounded her bed; every one was weeping. She said smiling, "You are all around me, I am very happy; thanks." Then suddenly, "Who wishes to have my hair?" No one ventured to answer. A long, half-reproachful look was cast on the weeping faces around. A voice cried, "I do." Rosa recognized it and said, "My mother shall have it."

She motioned to the Prior of San Sisto to come to her, and said to him in a whisper, "I beg of you to return this evening to my poor mother and do all you can to console her." From this time she seemed to retire to the feet of God, henceforth to speak to him alone. She said, "I suffer, my Jesus, but all for thy love! I do not fear hell, because I love thee too much. I am on fire, I am in flames! O Jesus! burn me, consume me in the flames of thy love!" It was now with difficulty that these holy ejaculations came from her oppressed bosom. Again, however, and for the last time, she rallied. Death had a hard struggle with her vigorous and innocent youth. This time the dying girl spoke the very language of the saints, and her farewell to earth was worthy of a St. Catharine of Sienna. "O Lord!" she said, "bless all men! bless this city of Pisa! bless her people! bless her bishop and her pastors! bless the Catholic Church! bless her sovereign Pontiff! bless her ministers and her children! Have pity on poor sinners; enlighten heretics; be merciful toward those who believe in thee, merciful also to those who believe not. Pardon all; be a loving Father to the good and to the wicked. Have pity on my soul, O Immaculate Virgin! Give to all thy peace, O Jesus!—that peace—" She was silent. A film gathered over her eyes; they saw no longer the things of earth, but a better light began to dawn on them. "Yes, yes," she murmured, "I see now; I begin to see—O the heavenly Jerusalem! O the angels! oh! how many angels! How beautiful! Yes, certainly, willingly, my God! Where am I? who calls me? where then? Let us go! let us go, my God! Let us go forward! Andiamo! andiamo! avanti!—" The words died on her lips; she made the sign of the cross, kissed the crucifix, and while mortal eyes still sought her upon earth, she was following the Lamb in the eternal choirs of the virgins.

Such is this beautiful death, every detail of which we have learned from her who, after having assisted at the sacrifice, did not die, but, like Mary, had to come down living from Calvary.

Will I be pardoned if I add some reflections on these letters and this narration? I said when commencing them that, as it seemed to me, they glorified Christianity in the two-fold transfiguration of love and of death. It seems to me yet clearer, now that I have finished them, that this is indeed their characteristic and their merit.

Yes, it is the glory of Christianity to have rendered possible, nay frequent, this sanctity of love which ancient philosophy pursued in its dreams, but which it had never either contemplated or exemplified. It is the glory of Christianity to have so well schooled, so well regulated the heart of man, to have made that heart at once so virginal and so strong, as to be capable of loving more, and better than ever, all that is lovable on earth, and at the same time capable of always loving it less than God. It is the glory of Christianity to have made a young girl—not a philosopher, not a poet, but a simple and pious girl—to realize unconsciously in her heart that sublimest conception of human wisdom; the continual, incessant passage of love from the shadows of being and of beauty, to the infinite being and the infinite beauty, from "divine phantoms," to use the expression of Plato, to the eternal reality. It is the glory of Christianity to have in all things opened to man a road toward God; to have taught him to make all his affections serve as so many steps whereby he may ascend to the absolute love: "In his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps." [Footnote 183] In fine, it is the glory of Christianity to have worked this prodigy, that a holiness so extraordinary, a perfection so superhuman, neither destroys nor fetters the pure affections of earth; so that the saints did not attain to the loving God alone by stifling in their hearts all love for their fellow-beings; but, on the contrary, they learned to love all mankind more than themselves, by first loving God above all.

[Footnote 183: Psalm lxxxiii. 6.]

Whoever, after seeing this, will meditate on the nature of the human heart, and on its history when abandoned to itself, will be forced to admit that here is indeed a transfiguration.

And as regards death, I find this transfiguration to be, if possible, more striking still. Death learned upon the cross that its highest office is to be the auxiliary of love. There an indissoluble fraternity was established between these two great forces; and there love received its mission to transform death into sacrifice. The ideal statue of the dying Christian is not then the ancient gladiator, falling, resigned but passive, his head bowed, his dim eye fixed on the earth which is fast escaping from him, impatient for the approach of nothingness, plunging willingly into eternal night. No; his ideal is the Crucified, dying erect, above the earth, "exaltatus a terra" in the attitude of the priest at the altar, pardoning all men, loving them to his latest breath, acquiescing in his death, nay, willing it, making himself the solemn deposit of his soul into the hands of his Father, at once the subject and the king of death, at once priest and victim.

Such is the Christian fraternity of Love and Death.

Hence it is, that through the differences of ages, of conditions, of minds, all holy deaths resemble one another; it is still love ruling death and transforming it into sacrifice. We have just portrayed the last hours of a betrothed bride who died in sacrificing to Jesus Christ her nuptial crown; ere while we followed through tears of admiration the account of another death, grander, more celebrated, more striking. [Footnote 184]

[Footnote 184: These lines were written a few days after the death of the Rev. Father de Ravignan. We give them to-day just as the first emotion dictated them, persuaded that time cannot take from the virtues of the saints their eternal actuality.]

Now, what similitude could we expect to find between the last hours of a holy religious, an illustrious orator, a great and heroic soul, and those of a simple young girl, strong only in her innocence? And yet I venture to compare these two deaths, and the longer I consider them the more do I find that they resemble each other, that they are blended together in one ruling sentiment; they are both a sacrifice, and a sacrifice conducted by love. Sacrifices very different, victims very unequal, I admit. What peace in the death of the holy Father de Ravignan; or rather, what triumph of the Christian will over death! How he rules it! He speaks of "this last affair which is to be conducted, like all others, with decision and energy;" he gives the directions for the sacrifice; he offers it himself! When did he more truly live than on that bed of death? when was he more wakeful than in that seeming sleep! Then was he so strong and vigorous that he seemed to dominate death itself; in this resembling, as far as is possible to man, Christ upon the cross, whom, say the doctors, death could not approach except by his express order. What love, in fine, in his every word and in those desires of heaven, for the impatience and the ardor of which he reproaches himself! For my part, I fancy I see him welcoming death, for which he had been preparing himself for more than thirty years, with that grave, sweet smile whose charm was so extraordinary.

The young bride of Pisa is far from this severe grandeur. There are tears, there are regrets in her last farewell. There is one earthly name that lingers on her lips even to the confines of heaven. She does not command death—she obeys it; and yet here, too, I see an altar, a victim a sacrifice. Here, too, I see the will, more tremulous, more surprised, indeed, than in the great religious, but still armed by love, ending by conducting itself the last affair, and by absorbing death in its victory. Once again, what becomes of death in such deaths? where is it? It seems to disappear: "Death, where is thy victory? Where is thy sting? It is swallowed up!"

Let our souls become inebriated with hope at the recital of holy deaths; let us yield ourselves without fear to the attraction which they give us for the life to come. Undoubtedly, the true secret of dying well is to live well; and our imperfection does not allow us to treat death as may the saints. But surely the love which transfigured their death, is at least begun in our souls; it may increase, and, the hour come, may transform for us also the supreme defiles into regions of light and peace.

Among the paintings which have been found in the catacombs of Rome, there is one that has always struck me as having a profound meaning: it is a jewelled cross, from all sides of which spring stems of roses, which bloom around it, and cover its severe nudity. [Footnote 185]

[Footnote 185: Two of these crosses, adorned with gems and flowers, have been discovered among the frescoes of the cemetery of St. Pontianus, whose origin seems to have been anterior to the third century. One of them surmounted an altar; the other, which decorated a baptistery, is one of the most valued monuments of Christian archaeology. Throughout its entire height, and on both arms, it is covered with precious stones, richly figured, alternately square and oval. The two arms support flambeaux, with the flame clearly outlined; from them also depend two little chains, at the extremity of which are suspended the traditional Alpha and Omega. From the foot of the cross to the arms spring on both sides stems of roses covered with leaves and flowers. Directly under this painting was the baptismal font, formed from a stream whose waters, ever smooth and limpid, seem even now, after the lapse of fourteen centuries, to await the immersion of the catechumens.

The discovery in a baptistery of this cross enveloped in splendor, light, and love, authorizes our conjectures as to the signification it must have had in relation to the neophytes. This precious fresco is carefully reproduced in the great work of M. Perret on the Roman catacombs.]

It is very rarely that the cross is found in the catacombs. Perhaps for the tender faith of the neophytes it was dreaded-the sight of that instrument of torture which was yet odious to the whole world, and was dragged daily through the streets for the punishment of slaves. It was, doubtless, to assist the transition from horror to love that the Christian instinct had covered that cross with precious stones and blooming roses, red still with a blood shed by Divine love for the salvation of mankind. Be that as it may, this symbol seems to me to express gloriously the transfiguration of death by Christianity. Ah! neophytes that we are, neophytes of death and a life to come, let us regard the dying moment as a cross which Jesus and his saints have covered for us with encouragement and hope. When the children of the first Christians wondered to see a gibbet on the altar, their fathers pointed to the jewels and roses, and told them of the Redeemer's love. If death terrifies us in its austere nakedness, let us look at the love which can transfigure it, and can make our last hour the happiest, and above all, the most precious in our life.

Rosa Ferrucci was mourned. The whole public press of Tuscany told of her death; poets chanted it; inscriptions were composed in her honor,—the Italian scholars excel in this art so little cultivated among us;—I transcribe one which I think touching:

CHASTE YOUTHS, TENDER VIRGINS,
DECORATE WITH TEARS
THE TOMB OF ROSA FERRUCCI,
SWEETEST GIRL,
IN THE POLITE ARTS
VERSED BEYOND THE CUSTOM OF WOMEN;
WHO,
ON THE VERY EVE OF MARRIAGE,
WHILST UNACCUSTOMED JOYS FILLED HER SILENT BREAST,
COMPLETED HER YOUTHFUL LIFE
SECURE.

Secura! beautiful word—word full of peace! and yet less eloquent than one single word which I once read on a fragment of marble taken from the Roman catacombs, [Footnote 186] and which I now bring to the tomb of her who has passed from earthly espousals to the nuptials of the Lamb. The case here also was that of a young Christian maiden. Was she affianced like Rosa Ferrucci? Was it the hand of a betrothed spouse that closed her tomb? The word we speak of, does it indicate her virginal glory, or was it her name? The little stone saith not. All that we know is, that the hand which carried into the consecrated galleries the mortal remains of the young Christian, after having marked the place of her repose, took a fragment of marble, laid it against the opening, fastened it by a little clay, and choosing a word among those which the Gospel had just given or explained to the world, engraved these six letters:

"Chaste,"

[Footnote 186: This fragment is now preserved among the monumenta vetera Christianorum in the Belvedere gallery of the Vatican.]

Memoirs Of Count Segur.

To record the actions and opinions of one who labored efficiently in the attainment of American independence is an agreeable task. The deeds of soldiers are always interesting to the historian and attractive to the reader. The philosophical principles that led gay young men from the brilliant capital of France to the distant regions of a new world, in order to practically assist in the assertion of human liberty, cannot be ignored, much less neglected, in our all-investigating age. Count Segur participated in the stirring scenes over which the genius of Washington presided, and he has transmitted to us the treasure of his experience in the first volume of his memoirs. As he lived in the times preceding the great Revolution which overthrew so many old forms of power and honor throughout Christendom, and as his facilities for obtaining a correct knowledge of the state of society and of systems in his day were extensive, his introductory pages are very instructive. This will appear from one comprehensive sentence of his own: "My position, my birth, the ties of friendship and consanguinity, which connected me with all the remarkable personages of the courts of Louis XV. and Louis XVI.; my father's administration, my travels in America, my negotiations in Russia and in Prussia; the advantage of having been engaged in intercourse of affairs and society with Catharine II., Frederick the Great, Potemkin, Joseph II., Gustavus III., Washington, Kosciusko, Lafayette, Nassau, Mirabeau, Napoleon, as well as with the chiefs of the aristocratic and democratic parties, and the most illustrious writers of my times;—all that I have seen, done, experienced, and suffered during the Revolution; those strange alternations of prosperity and misfortune, of credit and disgrace, of enjoyments and proscriptions, of opulence and poverty; all the different occupations which I have been forced to occupy, and the various conditions of life in which fate has placed me—having induced me to believe that this sketch of my life would prove entertaining and interesting; chance having made me successively a colonel, a general officer, a traveller, a navigator, a courtier, the son of a minister of war, an ambassador, a negotiator, a prisoner, an agriculturist, a soldier, an elector, a poet, a dramatic author, a contributor to newspapers, an essayist, a historian, a deputy, a counsellor of state, a senator, an academician, and a peer of France:"—Certainly a catalogue of sufficiently varied offices, winding up rather prosperously!

The family of Segur was ancient and honorable. In the field and in the cabinet his forefathers had distinguished themselves, and our author helped to extend his ancestral reputation. Highly gifted by nature, his ample opportunities of cultivation and acquirement made him familiar with the various branches of science then taught. He became deeply imbued with those philosophical notions that had begun to spread themselves abroad under the reign of Louis XV., and continued to gather might until they brought his successor to the block, and even still keep Europe in a state of unrest. From 1753 to 1774, when Louis XV. died, young Segur had occasion to learn as much as his youthful judgment would enable him, concerning the wretched state of society around the court of that weak and degraded prince. It was under his reign, or rather that of his mistresses—for their influence had more to do with the government than the king's—that the storm was brewed which swept away with terrible force so many corrupt systems of legislation and social life. The philosophers began to point their weapons against ancient customs. Parliamentary decrees came to the assistance of the latter, but "their acts of rigor against philosophical writings produced no other effect than to cause them to be sought after and read with a greater avidity. Public opinion became a power of opposition which triumphed over every obstacle; the condemnation was a title of consideration for its author; and under the reign of an absolute monarch, liberty having become a fashion in the capital, exercised a greater sway in it than the monarch himself." Who can fail to see that such results will always inevitably follow similar proceedings! Human nature has something imperatively logical in it, and it will act according to its laws, which are nothing else than the laws of Providence. There is a deep philosophy in what he says: "Power was still arbitrary, and yet authority lost its influence; public opinion escaped despotism by railing at it; we did not possess liberty, but license." (P.17.) The lethargy of one weak mind produced all this confusion. The parliament, clergy, philosophers, and courtiers, all joined for different purposes in the same common cry against the shameful indolence of the court. The revolution which was silently moving through public opinion was scarcely dreamed of by anybody. Rash measures of resentment, always the resort of weak and tyrannic minds, only served to irritate what had been provoked, and the folly of the king was shown in small acts of petty tyranny. But death came to remove him and his turpitude from the French throne. Segur narrates it: "In the month of April, 1774, as Louis XV. was going to hunt, he met a funeral, and, being fond of asking questions, he approached the coffin and inquired who it was they were going to bury? He was told it was a young girl who had died of the small-pox. Seized with a sudden fear, he returned to his palace, and was two days afterward attacked with that cruel malady, the very name of which had alarmed him. The hand of death was upon him; his flesh became corrupted; mortification ensued, and carried him off. His corpse was covered with lime, and conveyed to St. Denis without any kind of ceremony." (P. 32.)

He proceeds to philosophize upon the desertion of the royal fallen shadow by his most subservient flatterers, and observes that in proportion as they had been slavish to his whims and their own interests during his life, so did they evince their indifference to him when departed. They turned immediately to the rising sun, and offered him their adulatory worship. Still, the principles which had been set to work in former years continued to advance even under the benignant reign of Louis XVI., who finally atoned for the faults of his predecessors.

The author sums up succinctly the condition of the tottering society, daily becoming weaker: "The object of every one was to repair the old edifice; and, in this simultaneous attempt of all, it was levelled with the ground. Too much light was brought to the work by many, and a conflagration ensued. The consequence of this has been, that, for the last fifty years, our harassed lives have been to each of us a dream, alternately monarchical, republican, warlike, and philosophical." (P. 63.) The misfortune is, that this dreaming has not yet ended in France, or, indeed, in any part of Europe except Switzerland.

But we must hasten to the events which drew him into connection with the American war. He became a soldier, and, after fighting several duels, found himself carried away by the enthusiasm which filled his countrymen at the sound of the first cannon-shot fired in defence of the standard of liberty. "I recollect," he says, "that the Americans were then styled insurgents and Bostonians; their daring courage electrified every mind, and excited universal admiration, more particularly among young people. The American insurrection was everywhere applauded, and became, as it were, a fashion; and I was very far from being the only one whose heart beat at the sound of liberty just waking from its slumbers, and struggling to throw off the yoke of arbitrary power. On my arrival at Paris, I found the same agitation prevailing also there in the public mind. Nobody seemed favorable to the cause of England; all openly expressed their wishes for the success of the Bostonians."

Eager as were these young enthusiasts to fight in America for the cause of liberty, many obstacles interposed to prevent or defer the carrying out of their intentions. The French government was not in a very prosperous financial state at the time, as the country had scarcely recovered from the mad speculations of the Scotchman Law during the preceding reign. Besides, England was then powerful: her fleets swept the sea, and she had just conveyed across the Atlantic 40,000 mercenaries, to cut the throats of American freemen and stifle the rising spirit of liberty. Private aid was, indeed, freely afforded to the colonists; arms and ammunition were conveyed across the ocean in spite of embarrassing neutrality laws, and many enterprising officers were allowed to resign their positions in the French service and serve under Washington. When the American deputies, Silas Deane, Arthur Lee, and Benjamin Franklin, arrived in Paris, and were received with such cordiality at the French court, a new stimulus was given to the general desire of assisting the revolutionists. The appearance of those republican delegates produced a sensation in that brilliant capital. "Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the luxury of our capitol, the elegance of our fashions, the magnificence of Versailles, the still brilliant remains of the monarchical pride of Louis XIV., and the polished and superb dignity of our nobility, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the almost rustic apparel, the plain but firm demeanor, the free and direct language of the envoys, whose antique simplicity of dress and appearance seemed to have produced within our walls, in the midst of the effeminate and servile refinement of the eighteenth century, some sages contemporary with Plato, or republicans of the age of Cato and Fabius." (P. 101.)

No less impressive than their unpretending exterior, the honesty and artless sincerity of the American deputies gained the hearts of the French people, and enlisted in their cause the generous enthusiasm of the warlike portion of the nation. Numerous offers of service were made, and among the most distinguished were Lafayette, then a young man, the Count de Noailles, and Count Segur. The two latter were obliged by their parents to desist from the enterprise, which they had already arranged to carry out by crossing the ocean; but Lafayette succeeded in purchasing a vessel, which he armed and manned at his own expense, and, taking with him some experienced officers, sailed from a port in Spain and reached America, where he met with a reception due to his merits and noble purpose. A brave and experienced soldier, M. de Valfort, afterward chief instructor of Napoleon Buonaparte, accompanied the Marquis and rendered efficient service during his stay in the New World.

Some time was now spent by young Segur in attending to the events which Voltaire and his colaborers were bringing about in the world of literature. He was a visitor at the family residence of Segur, whose mother was a woman of note in the metropolis. The count himself narrates several interesting incidents respecting the arch-infidel, with whom he appears to have been on intimate terms. With regard to his death there is one thing worth recording. Immediately after his triumphal entry into Paris, death came upon him. Segur says that he recanted his former errors. "The clergy, no longer venturing to oppose him, now hoped to convert him. At first Voltaire yielded; he received the Abbé Gauthier, confessed himself, and wrote a profession of faith, which, without fully satisfying the priests, greatly displeased the philosophers. After escaping the danger, he forgot his fears and his prudence. A few weeks after, upon being taken extremely ill, he refused to see a priest, and terminated, with apparent indifference, a long life." There is a different version of the latter half of the story. It is related that he cried most piteously for a priest; but his philosophical friends refused to accord him his request, and he died with imprecations most horrible upon their heads for denying his dying wish.

Political changes at length enabled the count to embark for America, and become an actor in the great drama of freedom, of which he had been long an earnest spectator at a distance. War was declared between France and England. The French, under Arthur Dillon and Count Noailles, directed by D'Estaing, captured the town of Grenada; after which the latter sailed for Savannah, designing to seize that important position. Notwithstanding the valor of the French and Americans in the successive assaults upon the works, they were obliged to retire with loss, rendered still more lamentable by the fall of the brave Pulaski, who fought in America for the liberty which had been crushed in his own land. A concise and accurate narrative of the principal events that preceded the surrender of Cornwallis to the united arms of America and France, occupies a considerable space in the memoirs before us. The bravery of the French, very naturally, obtains a prominent notice until the moment of capitulation arrives. "The English troops then defiled between the two allied armies, drums beating, and carrying their arms, which they afterward deposited with their flags. As Lord Cornwallis was ill, General O'Hara defiled at the head of the English troops, and presented his sword to the Count de Rochambeau; but the French general, pointing to Washington at the head of the American army, told him that, the French being only auxiliaries, it was for the American general to receive his sword and give him his orders." (P. 237.)

Strange incidents happen in all wars. About this time, the French general, De Bouillé, made an attack on the Dutch islands of the West Indies, lately captured by the British. "Having during the night landed his troops in the island of St. Eustatia, he advanced at break of day to attack the principal fortress of the island, whose garrison was then engaged in manoeuvring on the plain. The vanguard of M. de Bouillé was composed of an Irish regiment in the service of France: deceived by the sight of their red coats, the English thought they saw a part of their own countrymen, and suffered themselves to be approached without suspicion. Undeceived too late, they vainly fought with courage; they were routed on all sides, and pursued with so much ardor that French and English entered pell-mell into the fortress, which remained in our possession." How many foreign battle-fields have found the Irish in the vanguard of armies, yet what avails their valor to their own country!

In 1782, Count Segur got permission to set out for America, and a frigate, La Gloire, of thirty-two guns, was placed at his disposal to carry important despatches to Count Rochambeau from his government. He had as fellow-passengers the Duke de Lauzun, the Prince de Broglie, the Baron Montesquieu, Count de Loménie, an Irish officer named Sheldon, Polawski, a Polish gentleman, and others eager to assist the inhabitants of a new world fighting for liberty, of which men were allowed to dream in the Old World. Enthusiastic as he had previously felt upon the subject, he could hardly restrain himself, now that he was on his way to accomplish his most cherished hopes.

A letter dated from "Brest Roads, onboard La Gloire, May 19th, 1782," contains some remarkably philosophical passages; and when writing his memoirs, forty-two years afterward, he could find no fitter language to convey the sentiments which then agitated his mind. "In the midst of an absolute government, everything is sacrificed to vanity, to the love of fame, or what is called glory, but which hardly deserves the name of patriotism in a country where a select number of persons, raised to the first employments of the state by the will of a master, and on the precarious tenure of that will, engross the whole legislative and executive power; in a country where public rights are only considered as private property, where the court is all in all, and the nation nothing. A love of true glory cannot exist without philosophy and public manners. With us, the desire of celebrity, which may be directed to good or evil, is the prevailing motive, while promotion depends not upon talents, but upon favor." A most pernicious course, and certain to produce disastrous consequences in any organization! He proceeds to expose the facility with which men adapt themselves to any absolute system in which the ambitious and selfish portion of the community find adulation and sycophancy the readiest ladders to power and eminence, while the truly meritorious find their virtue an obstacle to favor, if not an occasion of suspicion and fear. If the French nation continued without change under the system of government such as Count Segur represents that of his day, it would be more difficult to account for the phenomenon than the revolution which destroyed it.

The intelligent appreciation of right and freedom that incited those Frenchmen to dare the perils of the ocean preparatory to the more serious dangers of the battle-field for the sake of liberty, we should not too easily forget in the present age. It was no whimsical adventure that led them over the waves to engage in the pursuit of chimerical gratification. "In separating at this time from all I hold dear, I do not make so painful a sacrifice to prejudice, but to duty. ... Being a soldier, I leave my family, my native place, and all the charms of life, in order strictly to fulfil the duties of a profession, perhaps the noblest of any, when engaged in a just cause."

An interesting narrative of the voyage, in company with the frigate L'Aigle, of forty guns, and bearing a treasure of two million and a half livres for the aid of the Americans, is given in a few pages of the memoirs. They fell in with an English frigate of seventy-four guns, and a memorable engagement ensued. This vessel was the Hector, formerly a Frenchman, taken by the English at the defeat of De Grasse. In the midst of the engagement, Vallongue, the French commander, cried out to the English captain to strike his colors. "Yes, yes," said the latter ironically, "I am going to do it;" and completed his answer by a terrible broadside. So near were the vessels that the men used pistols; and even the rammers of the guns were wielded as clubs. For three quarters of an hour La Gloire bore the brunt of the unequal conflict; but, at length, aided by L'Aigle, they so disabled the English vessel that they expected soon to capture her. Next day, however, other sails appearing in sight, they abandoned the Hector, which afterward sank, and the crew was rescued by an American ship. An incident of the battle may be related, as showing the coolness and gayety of the French character, even amidst the most appalling scenes:

"The Baron de Montesquieu was standing near us, (on the deck;) we had of late been amusing ourselves with rallying him in regard to the words liaisons dangereuses, which he had heard us pronounce, and, in spite of all his inquiries, we had still evaded explaining to him that such was the title of a new novel, then much read in France. While we were thus conversing together, our ship received the fire of the Hector, and a bar-shot—a murderous junction of two balls united by an iron bar—struck a part of the quarter-deck, from which we had just before descended. The Count de Loménie, standing at the side of Montesquieu, and pointing to the shot, said very coolly, 'You were wishing to know what those liaisons dangereuses were? There, look, you have them.'"

Soon after this event they approached Delaware Bay, where they captured an English corvette. Being ignorant of the channel, however, they were necessarily delayed, and they were placed in a most critical position by the appearance of an English fleet, whose superior force seemed to leave them no chance of escape. This they effected, nevertheless, with the greatest difficulty, carrying with them the gold which they had been obliged to throw into the river when pursued by the English, but which they afterward fished up and secured. They then proceeded on the way to Philadelphia, and the Count gives amusing incidents that occurred on the route. Sometimes well treated by the inhabitants favorable to the cause of freedom, they were also subjected to much annoyance by the tories and the timid or vacillating between both sides. A certain Mr. Pedikies is particularly mentioned as having received them coolly and suspiciously, while promises, bribes, and threats were necessary to oblige him to afford them any aid. The contrast evident between the Americans and his own countrymen, is noticed by the writer in an aspect very favorable to the former. What especially attracted his attention was, the absence of different classes in society and of all poverty. "All the Americans whom we met were dressed in well-made clothes, of excellent stuff, with boots well cleaned; their deportment was free, frank, and kind, equally removed from rudeness of manner and from studied politeness; exhibiting an independent character, subject only to the laws, proud of its own rights, and respecting those of others. Their aspect seemed to declare that we were in a land of reason, of order, and of liberty." (P. 320.) He describes the face of the country, its boundless resources of agricultural wealth, and stores of future happiness and power. Philadelphia, then the capital of the country, attracted his admiration, and he enters upon a disquisition concerning the Quakers, who inspired him with a very high esteem for their principles of peace and rectitude. He says that "most of them were tories," and cannot blame them, because their religion forbade its members to engage in war. "Friend," said one of them to General Rochambeau, "thou dost practise a vile trade; but we are told that thou dost conduct thyself with all the humanity and justice it will admit of. I am very glad of this; I feel indebted to thee for it; and I am come hither to see thee, and to assure thee of my esteem." Another discovered a very ingenious mode of avoiding participation in the deeds of war, even by paying taxes to support it, and at the same time of complying with the law of Congress imposing taxation. The day upon which the collectors called, he placed a certain sum of money apart where they might find it, and thus he would not give, but allowed it to be taken. At Newport, he became acquainted with a venerable member of the same sect; and the Frenchman became an ardent admirer of Polly Leiton, the beautiful and modest daughter of his host. She made no pretence to conceal her abhorrence of war, and candidly addressed the Count in terms not at all complimentary to his military notions. "Thou hast, then," she said, "neither wife nor children in Europe, since thou leavest thy country, and comest so far to engage in that cruel occupation, war?" "But it is for your welfare," he replied, "that I quit all I hold dear, and it is to defend your liberty that I come to fight the English." "The English," she rejoined, "have done thee no harm, and wherefore shouldst thou care about our liberty? We ought never to interfere in other people's business, unless it be to reconcile them together and prevent the effusion of blood." "But my king has ordered me to come here and engage his enemies and your own," said Segur. To this she replied that no king has a right to order what is unjust and contrary to what God ordereth.

Having transacted important business with M. de Luzerne, at Philadelphia, and fully acquainted himself with the state of affairs and eminent men of the times, he set out for the camp of Washington and Rochambeau, on the banks of the Hudson. In the narrative of his journey thither, he shows himself a keen observer, and highly appreciates the character of the inhabitants, as well as the magnificent aspect of the country through which he passed. Schools, churches, and universities met him at every town; while kindness, comfort, happiness, were everywhere displayed. The modest tranquillity of independent men, knowing no power above them but the influence of law, and that law the expression of their own will; the vanity, servility, and prejudices of European society unknown; the general spirit of industry and the honorable occupation of labor common to all; such phases of life, so strange to the traveller, attracted his deepest attention.

The inns at which he stopped on his way were generally kept by captains, majors, colonels, generals, who conversed with equal facility upon military tactics and agricultural projects, and were no less entertaining in their stories of campaigns against the English than in their success in clearing forests and raising crops on the sites of Indian wigwams. This very naturally surprised the inquisitive Frenchman; but, while it presented to him a new phase of human society, it approved itself very highly to his judgment. Two things, however, he found to condemn; or, as he himself says, shocked him more than he could express. One was "a vile custom, the moment a toast was given, of circulating an immense bowl of punch round the table, out of which each guest was successively compelled to drink; and the other was, that, after being in bed, it was not unusual to see a fresh traveller walk into your room, and without ceremony stretch himself by your side, and appropriate a part of your couch."

Trenton and Princeton recalled to him the memory of brilliant exploits performed in the cause of liberty by Washington and Lafayette; but at Pompton he would have fallen into the hands of the Britishers, had he not been warned of his danger by an old woman sitting at her door, engaged by a spinning-wheel. Having at length crossed the majestic Hudson, which he eloquently describes, he was cheered by the sight of the American tents, and soon reached the headquarters of Rochambeau, at Peekskill. He took command of a veteran regiment of Soissonnais, which had been awaiting him, and he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. It had been formerly named Segur, from his father, who had commanded it at the famous battles of Lawfeld and Rocoux. In both these battles the old warrior was wounded at the head of his regiment, once by a musket-ball through his breast, and again by another shot that shattered his arm. Although he felt annoyed at the absence of active operations in the field, still he found amusement enough among his numerous countrymen, with whom he was now associated. One young officer of artillery particularly attracted his attention. This was Duplessis-Mauduit, who had most signally distinguished himself in several engagements, and who carried his attachment to liberty and equality so far as to be highly displeased if any one called him Sir or Mister. He would be called simply Thomas Duplessis-Mauduit.

His appreciation of the character of Washington is in accordance with the estimation in which that great man was and is held by all. "Too often," he says, "reality disappoints the expectations our imagination had raised, and admiration diminishes by a too close view of the object upon which it had been bestowed; but, on seeing General Washington, I found a perfect similarity between the impression produced upon me by his aspect and the idea I had formed of him. His exterior disclosed, as it were, the history of his life; simplicity, grandeur, dignity, calmness, goodness, firmness, the attributes of his character, were also stamped upon his features and in all his person. His stature was noble and elevated; the expression of his features mild and benevolent; his smile graceful and pleasing; his manners simple, without familiarity. He did not display the luxury of a monarchical general; everything announced in him the hero of a republic."

Expecting to find an army without organization, and officers without suitable military knowledge, he was surprised to find well-drilled battalions, and officers fully competent in all departments of their service. He dined frequently with Washington, and gives instructive descriptions of the habits of those Revolutionary heroes. The toasts most frequently given after dinner at headquarters were, "The Independence of the United States;" "The King and Queen of France;" "Success to the allied armies." The generous spirit of brotherhood that united the two nations in those days seems to have become unknown in our times; while she that was then the cruel enemy has now become the flattered friend. Who will deny that nations sometimes act the life of individuals? Washington's opinions on this point are worth recording: "He spoke to me of the gratitude which his country would ever retain for the King of France, and for his generous assistance; highly extolled the wisdom and skill of General de Rochambeau, expressing himself honored by having observed and obtained his friendship; warmly commended the discipline and bravery of our army; and concluded by speaking to me, in very handsome terms, of my father, whose long services and numerous wounds were becoming ornaments, he said, to a minister of war." (P. 253.)

The Americans and French were closely besieging the British at this time in New York, and although the prudence of the generals restrained the impetuosity of the allies, who eagerly sought to attack the enemy in their defences, it was not possible to prevent the execution of some daring exploits. But the armies soon separated, the French marching toward Newport and Providence, thence to Boston. They were ordered to the West Indies, where the decisive blow was to be struck at the English, and, as it eventually turned out, the independence of the States soon after followed.

We cannot but admire the wisdom displayed in this book of memoirs, written eighty-five years ago, amidst scenes and times that could afford material from which the future greatness of the country could be predicted only by a very sagacious mind. He clearly foresaw, in the rising colonies then about to emerge into a powerful nationality, all the resources which, by judicious and liberal legislation, led to the wonderful prosperity with which our country is blessed. The religious toleration and equality which reigned everywhere he highly eulogized, and accounts very philosophically for the necessity of such a state of things. It must be borne in mind that Count Segur was a follower of Voltaire, although of a Protestant family. For this reason the ingenuousness with which he testifies to the origin of this religious toleration is more deserving of notice. At page 371, he says: "The multiplicity of religions rendered toleration indispensable among them, and, what will, perhaps, appear singular, the example of this toleration was set by the Catholics. No church, therefore, was privileged or considered the established church; the ministers of each religion were paid by those who professed it, and there existed between them not a fatal spirit of jealousy, a source of discord, but a laudable emulation of charity, benevolence, and virtue." It is pleasing to record this generous tribute of respect to the liberal spirit which influenced the religious denominations of those Revolutionary times. It is true that in all religious sects there are some members who are ever ready to clamor for persecution, and eager to adopt forcible measures to compel their unwilling neighbors to believe according to their own special measure of belief. And it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to name one religious party that has not, when sufficiently strong to do so, been led into the commission of acts which succeeding generations would willingly have effaced from the record of their predecessors. For instance, what intelligent Presbyterian of the present day would not willingly blot from the page of her history the deeds that stain the Scotch Church in the days of her influence? Buckle, one of the deepest non-Catholic writers of the present age, says that her real character was "one of the most detestable tyrannies ever seen on the earth." "When the Scotch Kirk was at the height of its power, we may search history in vain for any institution which can compete with it, except the Spanish inquisition. Between these two there is a close and intimate analogy. Both were intolerant, both were cruel, both made war upon the finest parts of human nature, and both destroyed every vestige of religious freedom." (Vol. ii. p. 322.) It is more truthful to admit the opinion of Mr. Buckle than to attempt to controvert his facts of proof by which he establishes his position. We only advert to this as elucidating the principle that, although there may be individual Presbyterians and individual Catholics who feel a disposition to recur to the unchristian acts of some of their predecessors, yet it cannot be denied that they are exceptional. The general spirit of toleration which Count Segur so justly appreciates, is too deeply implanted in the institutions of the Republic to be blown away by any foul blast of weak bigotry.

Another subject upon which he wisely commented is equally important to show his great foresight. After aptly describing the reasons from which he presaged the future greatness of the nation, he observes that "the only danger to be apprehended hereafter for this happy Republic, (which then consisted of three millions of inhabitants,) is the state of excessive opulence of which its exclusive commerce seems to hold out the promise, and which may bring luxury and corruption in its train." (P. 374.) Has not this already come to pass? Again he asks: "Is not that difference which is observable between the manners and situation of the North and South calculated, in fact, to create an apprehension for the future of a political separation, which would weaken and perhaps even dissolve this happy union, which can only retain its strength while it remains firm and intimate?" The past few years have proven the justness of his views.

We cannot better conclude than by transcribing his relation of an incident which evinced the bravery of his friend Lynch, an officer of the staff of Count d'Estaing, at the storming of Savannah: "M. d'Estaing, at the most critical moment of that sanguinary affair, being at the head of the right column, directed Lynch to carry an urgent order to the third column, which was on the left. These columns were then within grape-shot of the enemy's entrenchments; and on both sides a tremendous firing was kept up. Lynch, instead of passing through the centre or in the rear of the columns, proceeded coolly through the shower of balls and grape-shot, which the French and English were discharging at each other. It was in vain that M. d'Estaing, and those who surrounded him, cried to Lynch to take another direction; he went on, executed his order, and returned by the same way; that is to say, under a vault of flying shot, and where every one expected to witness his instant destruction. 'What!' cried the general, on seeing him return unhurt, 'The devil must be in you, surely. Why did you choose such a road as that, in which you might have perished a thousand times over?' 'Because it was the shortest,' answered Lynch. Having uttered these words, he went with equal coolness and joined the party that most ardently engaged in storming the place."

It has been a pleasure, as well as an instruction, to accompany in his thoughts and actions one of those many noble and brave foreigners who aided, by their services, in the establishment of our independence, and forced a powerful foe to relinquish her grasp upon a nation struggling for liberty.

Notre Dame De Garaison.

In the province of Aquitaine, a short distance from the village of Monléon, among the hills of Les Hautes Pyrénées, is a valley bearing the name of Garaison, where stands a votive chapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin. It is a favorite place of pilgrimage for all the country around, which has been approved of by Popes Urban VIII, and Gregory XVI., who have enriched it with indulgences. It was erected in consequence of the apparition of our Blessed Lady on the spot, about the year 1500, to a young shepherdess who was guarding her flock in the valley. The legend is as follows, somewhat abridged. It is supported by most unobjectionable witnesses at the time of the event, by tradition, and the unanimous voice of the country around; by public documents, and by the effects which followed and which still exist. As for me, however, this is of little moment, these legends not being matters of faith. It is sufficient for me to know that the spot in question is one dear to Mary and peculiarly favored by Heaven. It has been sanctified by the sighs of contrition, by the pure confessions, the fervent communions, and the sudden and miraculous conversions of those who have gone thither in honor of the Mother of our Lord.—But the legend:

A young girl of twelve years of age, Anglèse de Sagazan, was guarding her flock near a large hawthorn which shaded a fountain of living water. The deep shade and the soft murmur of the fountain invited repose, and, opening her basket of provisions, the young shepherdess seated herself by the spring to dip her dry brown bread in the clear, cold water. Suddenly a lady of majestic mien, with a serene countenance and gracious regard, clothed in a long, white robe, which fell in graceful folds to her feet, stood before the astonished maiden, who, dazzled by her appearance, remained immovable and speechless. Then our gracious Lady, who loveth the poor and the humble, declared to her that she had chosen this spot as a place of benediction, whereon she wished a shrine erected in her honor, around which her children might gather with more than ordinary assurance. This apparition occurring three days in succession, the maiden related to her father what had happened. He, in turn, reported the occurrence among his neighbors, who were quite incredulous, but yet, through curiosity or inspired by God, flocked to the fountain, where was still to be heard the voice of the Virgin, though no one saw her but the pure eyes of the shepherdess. The people went to seek the curé, and returned to the fountain with banners, chanting hymns in honor of Mary. They erected a large cross on the spot. After that the water of the fountain seemed miraculously changed, and the sick went thither to be healed. The sudden restoration of many to health made the spot celebrated in a short time. The number of miracles increasing, the present elegant vaulted chapel was erected by the voluntary offerings of grateful pilgrims, and there the benediction of Heaven descended upon the votaries of Mary. At this day wonderful are the prodigies wrought on soul and body at the shrine of our Lady of Garaison. Ages ago God healed many who, at the troubling of the waters, descended to the angel-guarded Pool of Siloam. His ways are not as our ways. ...

I made a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Garaison in June, 18—. The evening before, I went to shrift, by way of preparation, and the next morning left at an early hour with a party of friends, who completely filled our private diligence. There were five of us, and two servants, besides the driver and his more efficient wife. I might call her the driver and him the postilion. Quite a procession we should have made in honor of our Lady of Garaison! We ought to have gone plodding along the highway in sandal shoon and penitential garb, with pilgrim staff and scallop-shell, knocking our breasts as we went, as did the votaries of the middle ages. But in these days, when stout old Christian flies along the celestial railroad with his burden of sin carefully stowed away in the baggage-car, I, a feeble pilgrim, may be excused for seeking as comfortable a seat as could be found in our rickety old diligence. As I got in, I caught a satisfactory glimpse of a large basket, in which were light, crispy pistolets, heaps of deep-red cherries, flasks of water, and bottles of mild vin rouge, which our servant had thoughtfully provided for our outer man. And they were not disdained in our drive of thirty miles. Such due attention having been paid to our bodily wants, we were quite at leisure to abandon ourselves to our spiritual musings or our devotions! Who could wish to have his soul constantly disturbed and pestered by a jaded and craving body? It is quite contrary to the religious as well as philosophic spirit of this enlightened nineteenth century, and though I was somewhat ascetic, and rather inclined to the sterner rules of medieval times, the thought almost reconciled me to my corner, where I braced my weary back, and to the aforesaid basket, whence I fortified my body.

"Ciel!" I exclaimed, as I found myself en diligence and the stone cross of St. Oren's Priory fast disappearing, "have I returned to the middle ages, or am I dreaming?" I could not help rubbing my eyes, and wondering what some of my more enlightened American friends would think, if they could see me seriously, deliberately setting off on a pilgrimage (even in a carriage!) of thirty miles, to pay my devotions at a shrine of the Virgin Mary! But yes—my head was quite sound, though filled with the vows I wished to offer in a spot peculiarly dear to our Lady. This was the first visit I ever made to one of these places of popular devotion, and so, apart from my religious motives, I felt some curiosity to see this mountain chapel, away almost upon the confines of Spain.

The roads are fine in that part of France, and bordered by magnificent shade-trees. Owing to recent rains, we had no dust. We passed waving wheat-fields, luxuriant vineyards hedged with hawthorn, and away on the neighboring hills was many an old château with its venerable towers, and hard by an antique church. I found everything novel, and consequently interesting. Going and returning we stopped at most of the villages. In every one we found an old vaulted stone church, with thick walls and doors, ever open to the passer-by. In each were several chapels, adorned with oil paintings, bas-reliefs, and statues of the saints, and in every church were the stations of Via Crucis well painted, and the little undying lamp of olive oil burning near the gilded tabernacle—announcing the presence of the Divinity—the Shekinah of the new Israel—and recalling the beautiful lines of Lamartine:

"Pâle lampe du sanctuaire,
Pourquoi dans l'ombre du saint lieu,
Inaperçue et solitaire,
Te consumes-tu devant Dieu?

"Ce n'est pas pour diriger l'aile
De la prière ou de l'amour,
Pour éclairer, faible étincelle,
L'oeil de celui qui fit le jour.

......

"Mon oeil aime à se suspendre
A ce foyer aérien;
Et je leur dis, sans les comprendre.
Flambeaux pieux, vous faites bien.

"Peutêtre, brillantes parcelles
De l'immense création,
Devant son trône imitent-elles
L'éternelle adoration.

"C'est ainsi, dis-je à mon âme,
Que de l'ombre de ce bas lieu
Tu brûles, invisible flamme,
En la présence de ton Dieu.

"Et jamais tu n'oublies
De diriger vers lui mon coeur,
Pas plus que ces lampes remplies
De flotter devant le Seigneur." [Footnote 187]

[Footnote 187: In the absence of a suitable poetic version of the above, we subjoin—for such of our readers as are not familiar with the language of the original—the following prose translation of it, from Digby's Ages of Faith:

"Pale lamp of the Sanctuary, why, in the obscurity of the Holy Place, unperceived and solitary, consumest thou thyself before God? It is not, feeble spark! to give light to the eye of him who made the day: it is not to dispel darkness from the steps of his adorers. The vast nave is only more obscure before thy distant glimmering. And yet, symbolic lamp, thou guardest thy immortal fire, thou dost flicker before every altar, and mine eyes love to rest suspended on this aerial hearth. I say to them, I comprehend not; ye pious flames, ye do well. Perhaps these bright particles of the immense creation imitate before his throne the eternal adoration! It is thus, say I to my soul, that, in the shade of this lower place, thou burnest, a flame invisible, a fire which remains unextinguished, unconsumed, by which incense can be at all times rekindled to ascend in fragrance to heaven!"]

In these churches there was always an altar to the Virgin, too, adorned with lace and flowers, and streaming with gay ribbons and pennons, after the taste of the country. In one we found a wedding party, and were in season to hear the Ego conjungo vos of the curé over a very modest and subdued-looking pair.

We often passed huge crosses of wood or stone erected by the wayside, to which were attached the instruments of the Passion. I noticed among the passers-by that the women made the sign of the cross and the men raised their hats. I did not find the villages very agreeable. The houses were of stone, with tiled roofs, and had a cold, forbidding look. The paved streets were narrow, with no sidewalks, and anything but cleanly. I thought of our fresh New England villages, their white cottages and green blinds, and front yards filled with flowers and shrubbery. But those of France were more antique and more picturesque—at a distance. Flocks of sheep dotted the country, each guarded by a shepherdess, who wore a bright scarlet capuchon, which covers the head and falls below the waist. It is picturesque, if not graceful, and at a distance the wearer looks like one of her native but overgrown coquelicots. They were generally spinning, after the manner of the country, with the distaff under one arm and twirling the spindle in the hand, thus laying their hands to the spindle and their hands hold of the distaff after the manner of Old Testament times. How they contrive to spin with these two instruments is past my comprehension, but they do succeed admirably.

Every now and then we met a donkey groaning under the weight of his ears and of a huge cage, or panier, as large as himself on each side, filled with live poultry or fruit and vegetables. Perched on the top between these queer saddle-bags was a bright-eyed, sunburnt paysanne, most patiently thwacking Old Dapple marketward. The oxen looked as if they fared better; they were sleek and clean, that is, what I could see of them, for they were almost entirely encased in great coverings, as if they were elephants. Their drivers wore a blouse of blue cotton, and wooden shoes with most impertinently turned-up toes. They are worn (the shoes) both by men and women. They make a terrible clatter; you would think the Philistines upon you; but they are very durable.

The country reminded me of the interior of New England. The hills were finely wooded, more so than I had expected in that old country. On leaving Monléon, we entered a valley, narrow at first, but which gradually opened, forming a basin of considerable extent, with green meadows and shady thickets. It is bounded and crowned by hills, and a few hours distant are the Pyrenees. This valley is solitary—secluded, but not wild or uncultivated. Perhaps there is a score of houses in it. From about the centre rise the turrets of Notre Dame de Garaison. The whole country was once covered with magnificent oaks which had been planted by the old chaplains, but the vandals of a later day had cut away whole forests.

The rain poured down in torrents when we entered the valley of Garaison, but that did not prevent us from admiring the locality so favorable to devotion. Far from any city, free from noise, the chapel is buried among the hills and forests of Aquitaine, a spot chosen by God in which to reveal his presence and power! What a delicious solitude! We drove to a little auberge—Hotel de la Paix!—erected for the accommodation of pilgrims. In the olden time they were sheltered in a monastery, which was devastated during the Revolution, and now, when great festivals draw crowds of people, the women often remain in the house all night. Leaving our carriage at the hotel, we immediately went to the church in spite of the rain, passing through a long avenue of majestic oaks.

The principal entrance to this sacred retreat is quite imposing. The front is decorated with a statue of the Virgin, holding the dead Christ in her arms—the bodies of natural size, and the work of a skilful hand.

The buildings form a vast enclosure, in the centre of which is the chapel, having on the north and south two courts which separate it from the rest of the edifice. I was surprised to find so fine an establishment so far away from any city. We passed through a cloister shaded by cypresses to the chapel. Over the door and at the sides are niches, in which are statues. The vestibule, as in all these old churches, is very low. Here my attention was attracted by a great number of small paintings which cover the walls and vault, forming a complete mosaic. These ex-voto are not remarkable as works of art, but precious on account of the miraculous events which they retrace. They represent the persons who have been cured of their infirmities by the intercession of Mary; to each is attached a label bearing the name of the person and the date of the cure. These paintings were left untouched at the Revolution, though the venerable guardians of this sanctuary were driven from their cherished solitude; and the sacred vestments, the holy vessels, the silver lamps, the jewels, and other ex-voto of all kinds, which had been offered the Virgin in gratitude for grace received, were carried away; the fine statues of the twelve Apostles were destined to the flames, but were rescued by the people of Monléon, whose church they now adorn.

From the vestibule we passed into the nave. One feels an inexpressible emotion of piety and devotion on entering this beautiful church. I went immediately to the grand altar to pay my devotions to our Lady of Garaison, while the servant took my letter of introduction to M. le Supérieur, who was fortunately at liberty. I found him a tall, fine-looking gentleman, instead of a hoary old hermit, and as polite as a Parisian. He wore a flowing soutane, confined at the waist by a fringed girdle, and on his head was a sort of skull-cap, such as the priests wear in that country—I imagine, to protect their tonsured heads from the cold. He conducted me over the whole establishment. In his room I saw the skull of the shepherdess to whom the Virgin appeared. She died a nun, and more than a century old. After her death, her body was given to the chapel, which had been erected during her life, and to which she had been permitted to resort from time to time. The fountain is under the grand altar; but the water is conducted into a basin in a vault to the east of the chapel. Every one says the waters still perform wonderful cures. The superior said it was not owing to any mineral qualities; and as I was not able to analyze them, I contented myself with drinking quite freely of them, bathing therein my forehead, and inwardly praying God to heal every infirmity of body and soul. On the basin is a bas-relief representing the Virgin's appearing to the shepherdess.

The arches and walls of the sacristy are covered with the frescoes of a by-gone age, but which have not lost their brilliancy of color. They represent the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles; angels bearing to our Saviour the instruments of the Passion, etc.

Over the grand altar of the church, in a niche, is a statue of Notre Dame de Garaison, the mother of sorrows, holding in her arms the inanimate body of her divine Son. There are four small chapels, two on each side, separated by walls which advance to the principal nave, and are there converted into pilasters to support the vault. In them are some oil paintings, two of which are very fine, the angel guardian and a Madonna. The niches, which were robbed in 1789, have been newly furnished with gilded statues of the twelve Apostles, large as life, and bearing the instruments of their martyrdom; and one of our Saviour in the midst. On the vault are painted the patriarchs and prophets of the old law. These gilded statues and altars give a most brilliant appearance to the lightly vaulted Gothic chapel.

In the south court is a fountain. Mary stands with her divine babe in her arms, sculptured in white marble. The water spouts out at her feet through four small masks, and falls into a basin of pure white marble, whence it flows into another still larger. The statue has been a little injured by exposure to the weather; but still it reminds one that Mary is the channel through which the grace of God comes to us—that through her flow the waters of benediction and of grace upon man!

The refectory is vaulted and paved. In it is a whispering gallery, common in the monasteries of the middle ages, so one could communicate from one corner to the other opposite in the lowest tone. I am sure the knight of the couchant leopard was no more surprised or awed by the midnight procession he witnessed in the little chapel of Engaddi, than was I at a late hour in the evening, when, while I was still rapt in prayer, and quite unconscious of what was going on around me in this still mountain chapel, I found the altar suddenly illuminated, and a door opened to a long procession of white-robed priests and about a hundred young men:

"Taper and Host and Book they bare,
And holy banner flourished fair
With the Redeemer's name.

They passed around the chapel, chanting Tantum Ergo, and then returned to the altar to give the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The richly gilded chapel was radiant with reflected light, and the strains of O salutaris Hostia! seemed to float upward in celestial tones, as they issued from lips purified by solitude and prayer. I never felt more devotion at this solemn rite than there, in the shadow of the Pyrenees. I forgot my fatigue, and yielded to heartfelt emotion. Exiled from my native land, to which I might never return, and among those who were almost entire strangers to me, I felt myself folded to the bosom of divine Providence, and that the All-Father would have me consider every part of his world as my home, and all those souls, which he has breathed into human forms, as my brethren and sisters.

It was a late hour when I fell asleep on my hard bed at the Hotel de la Paix. Coldly looking down upon me from a rude frame was, for my guardian saint, a picture of Napoleon le Grand; but, though he had routed many a formidable host, he did not put to flight a single sweet fancy or holy thought that thronged my brains, waking or sleeping.

At an early hour I was again before the altar of Our Lady. Priests were celebrating the holy mysteries at every altar when I entered the chapel. At seven o'clock, M. le Supérieur offered the Holy Sacrifice for my intentions, at which I communicated. ...

My devotions ended, I rambled around the garden and through the cloisters, drank again from the fountain, and then prepared for my departure. I had gone to Garaison with a deeper intent, more serious purpose, than is my intention to unveil here. I bore in my heart a burden—a burden common to humanity—which I laid down at the feet of Mary, thinking, as I did so:

"Oh! might a voice, a whisper low,
Forth from those lips of beauty flow!
Couldst thou but speak of all the tears,
The conflicts, and the pangs of years,
Which at thy secret shrine revealed
Have gushed from human hearts unsealed!"

I left that chapel in the strong embrace of the everlasting hills, and with sunlight flooding its walls like a glory. Turning to give it a last look, at the last turn in the valley, it seemed like a lily rising up in the green meadows—fit type of her to whom it is dedicated.

Since that time I have visited many a shrine of la belle France, but I turn to none with a more grateful heart than NOTRE DAME DE GARAISON.

Count Ladislas Zamoyski.
Translated From The French
Of Ch. De Montalembert.

The nineteenth century, which is already drawing to a close, will in the course of its history present nothing more grand, more touching, more deeply impressed with the stamp of moral beauty, than Poland—vanquished, proscribed, abandoned by the world.

This nation in mourning and in blood, which yet will not die—this race of indomitable men and women, which survives all tortures, all treasons, and all catastrophes, what a spectacle and a lesson does it present! Its existence is at once a defiance and an appeal: a defiance to adverse fortune, and an appeal to what seems the too tardy justice of an avenging God. Abandoned and calumniated by successful iniquity, by selfish opulence, by the ever-ready worshippers of success, a sight intolerable to their conquerors, and a reproach to the powerful of the world—there they abide, like Mardochai before Aman, firmly resolved to forget not, to despair not, nor to capitulate; incomparable types of suffering, of sacrifice, of unwearying patience, of lofty patriotism; invincible martyrs and confessors, not only of faith, but of right, of country, and of liberty!

In the centre of this group of proscribed and oppressed, like some great oak struck by lightning in the midst of a burning forest, stands out in bold relief the noble figure of Count Ladislas Zamoyski.

Ere yet the waves of forgetfulness and indifference have effaced his noble memory, let us endeavor to recall and rescue from oblivion some traits of an existence which, by every title, belonged to ourselves; for in France he was born, (during a journey of his parents there,) and in France he died, [Footnote 188] having passed here the greater part of the thirty-seven years which he spent in exile, without having at any time returned to his true country.

[Footnote 188: January 11th, 1868.]

Here it would seem appropriate to speak of the ancestors of the illustrious dead. But how can we fitly portray to this generation the splendor and power of those ancient houses of Poland and Lithuania, whose immense possessions, countless adherents, and extent of influence find no parallel in our own country, even at the most aristocratic periods of its history? It was a Zamoyski who headed the embassy which came to offer the crown of Poland to a brother of Charles IX.; [Footnote 189] and some one of this race is ever to be found dominant in their country's annals. They may have had equals, but I know that in their native land none ever assumed to be their superiors.

[Footnote 189: For an account of this embassy, see the excellent work of the Marquis de Noailles, Henri de Valois et la Pologne in 1572.]

Nothing is more a propos to our immediate subject than the legend of their device and bearings. A King of Poland, whose people had some cause for discontent, being engaged in a conflict with the Teutonic chevaliers, saw on the field of battle a Zamoyski dying, his breast pierced with three lances. The king approached to aid and comfort him. "To mnicy [Transcriber's note: blurred.] boli!" exclaimed the dying hero. "It is not that which pains me!" or in other words, "A wound does less harm than a bad prince or a bad neighbor."

These three words and three lances have ever since been the armorial bearings of the Zamoyski family. Reflecting upon them, we find in them a singular appropriateness to that one of the line whom we have best known; that illustrious and wounded hero whom we have had so long before our eyes with the deadly steel in his heart, and on his lips a word of proud resignation or intrepid disdain.

Fortunate are those great races who, before they are submerged by the rising tide of equality and modern uniformity, can give forth one last flash of glory, and furnish to the historian some great heart enthusiastic for a good cause and a noble faith; some vigorous lover of right and duty, capable of signalizing himself by a generous death, like our own Duke de Luynes, or by an entire life of devotion and sacrifice, like Count Ladislas Zamoyski. For reason as we will, so long as men are men, they will be always and everywhere moved by a something—I know not what—a kind of realization of completeness, which nobility of birth imparts to great virtues or great misfortunes.

Ladislas Zamoyski, in his 28th year, was an officer of the lancers in the Polish army, and aide-de-camp to the Grand Duke Constantine; he was desirous above all things to serve his country as a soldier and a citizen, when the military insurrection of Warsaw broke out, at the end of November, 1830.

It was, as has often been repeated, the advance-guard of the Russian army, directed against the France of July, which turned back against the main body. Although the count had taken no part in the insurrection, the high rank of his family and the precocious maturity of his mind enabled him to profit by the particular position which he held near the prince, whose arbitrary and unwise acts had contributed more than anything else to provoke the revolt. He obtained from the brother of the emperor the order which separated the Polish troops from the Russian, and gave a sort of method to the military movement, which soon expanded into a national revolution. Believing himself freed now from all allegiance to the grand duke, the young count took part in all the exploits of the campaign of 1831—a campaign which has left imperishable recollections in the minds of all who were living at that time.

For ten months all Europe stood breathless, gazing with deep and varied emotions on those fearful turns of fortune. Every incident produced vehement agitations at the French tribune, in the streets of Paris, and even in the reviews held by the French king. There was something both of heroic and legendary interest in this conflict, so disproportioned yet so prolonged, between a handful of brave men on the one side, and the colossal resources of Russia on the other—a conflict where the veteran comrades of Dombrowski and Poniatowski were led on by youths inflamed with holy zeal for their country's liberty, where the first place was so long held by the Generalissimo Skrzynecki, true paladin of the middle ages, who always put in the orders of the day for his army prayers to the Holy Virgin as Queen of Poland, and who, brave in the field and devout at the altar, was so pre-eminently hero, Christian, and Catholic. I know not how upon this point the young Poles of our own day stand; but I know they would be faithless to the most noble examples of the heroes of 1831 if they should suffer themselves to be enervated by religious indifference, or, sadder still, should they ever trail through the depths of atheism and modern materialism that banner which their ancestors never separated from the cross of Jesus Christ.

When, finally, the countless masses which Russia threw upon Poland had dislodged the insurgents from all their positions; when the attempts at intervention made by the French government were rendered nugatory by the icy and cynical indifference of Lord Palmerston; [Footnote 190] when Europe resigned herself to be a tranquil spectator at the sacrifice of a nation, Ladislas Zamoyski, firm to the end, in the front rank of combatants, holding then the grade of colonel, laid down his arms with the last division of the Polish army, that of Ramorino, defeated in Gallicia. He crossed then the frontiers of that country which he was destined never more to see, and came, wounded and suffering, but not less resolute than in the first days of his manhood, to put himself at the disposal of his uncle, Prince Adam Czartoryski, the venerable chief of the Polish emigration, as he had been president of their national government.

[Footnote 190: See the correspondence between Prince Talleyrand and Lord Palmerston on the Polish question, July, 1831, in the documents submitted to the English parliament by order of the Queen, in 1861.]

It was then that we saw him for the first time among us. Young, tall, commanding, active, and untiring, he carried in his deportment and in those glorious wounds the credentials of his mission. Always occupied with the cause of his country, but with a serenity and stability far beyond his years, he attracted to himself all attention. A solitary and embarrassed wanderer in a world which was so soon to grow heartlessly indifferent to Poland, he entered calmly and resolutely upon that obscure, laborious, and uncongenial path which honor and duty had traced for him.

I must be permitted here a just homage to that first Polish emigration of 1831, which, preceded by the members of the national government, by the Count Platen and General Kniacewicz, and grouped about Prince Czartoryski, the Generals Dembinski, Dwernicki, Rybinski, and the former ministers, Malachowski and Morawski, have given us, for nearly forty years, such noble examples of fortitude and devotedness, of modest dignity and magnanimous resignation. How many of these yet remain to whom I can address this last testimony of an admiration which I shall always account among the most salutary and most lasting emotions of my life? I owe to them a great good—the power to know and to comprehend the grandeur and beauty of a vanquished cause!

Forced by circumstances to immolate everything in the worship of their assassinated country, not one hesitated before this stern requisition. Rich and poor, old and young, citizens and soldiers, all were called on for sacrifices painful and unexpected, and none shrank back; indeed, to many the privations they were obliged to endure formed a strange contrast to their previous habits of prodigality and almost oriental luxury. Ladislas Zamoyski was conspicuous in this career, so new to himself and his comrades. The subsidies which his friends forced him to accept were invariably reserved for some general object, or divided among his less fortunate companions, saying: "I learn every day to do without something." One thing only did he guard carefully—his beloved sword, as, with juvenile naïveté, he was accustomed to call it, in the warm hope and belief that it might yet serve his country.

The French refugees, whom the Edict of Nantes expelled from their homes, represented liberty of conscience odiously persecuted, and by this title they won the active sympathies of all the Protestant nations. The Irish emigrants, who, about the same time, were the victims of an intolerance as bitter and inconsistent in Protestant England, found in France and Spain places freely opened to them, and which they honorably filled. The French emigration of 1792 represented not only loyalty to a monarchy, but an entire social order, whose end no one believed so near—an order which still reigned in nearly the whole of Europe; to this they owed, at least during the first years of their exile, the aid and support of all the powers affected or threatened by the Revolution. It was quite otherwise with the Polish emigration of 1831, which, nevertheless, personified, at one and the same time, liberty both political and religious, and, more than all, a grand people, erased, by injustice, by a crime without a parallel, from the list of nations, and unanimous in protesting against that decree. They received from perplexed and divided Europe not one of those consolations and encouragements which it was their right to expect.

France and England had generous alms to solace needs purely material, but nothing more. Ruled by a double fear—that of the Muscovite preponderance from without, and that of dangers from demagogues within—no statesman, even the most liberal, was able or willing to espouse the Polish cause. It was a sadder thing still that a misapprehension prevented their receiving a sympathy which otherwise would have been first offered. Beyond the little circle of liberal, free-hearted Catholics—a circle then very limited—the Polish refugees, victims of the most bitter persecutor of the church in the nineteenth century, met no response from the religious world. It was a time when Catholic Europe, monarchical and aristocratic, was miserably prostrate before the Austria of Prince Metternich and the Russia of the Emperor Nicholas. Consequently, at Paris, and, above all, at Rome, there was to be caught not one glimpse of salvation. There existed among the defenders of the throne and the altar an animosity to the Poles truly revolting, unjustifiable traces of which even yet remain. It was the heaviest cross, for a multitude of Christian souls, which the Polish emigration hid in its bosom. I have the right to speak of it, for no one, perhaps, on this subject, has received more mournful confidences, and no one, I venture to believe, has done more to induce among Catholics a happy change—a change commencing with the good and fatherly Pope Gregory XVI., and precisely on occasion of Count Ladislas Zamoyski, whom he was pleased, at my request, to encourage to visit him in Rome. [Footnote 191]

[Footnote 191: Until 1837, no Pole was allowed to enter Rome, without a passport visé by Austria, Prussia, or Russia; consequently, this excluded the exiles of 1830.]

But how time and efforts must fail in making reparation for this strange misunderstanding! and how much it must have aggravated the sorrows inseparable from prolonged exile—those sorrows which every noble heart must comprehend, even without having experienced them, and which inspired, in a sad, gifted soul, the last ray of its genius!

"He passed, a wanderer on earth. May God guide the poor exile! I move among the crowd; they gaze at me, and I at them, yet each to each is unknown. The exile is alone everywhere," [Footnote 192]

[Footnote 192: Paroles d'un Croyant. 1833.]

Count Zamoyski, always sincerely attached to the faith of his fathers, even before the death of a beloved mother had developed in him a fervent piety, lived long enough to witness this happy change in Catholic opinion. He had the consolation of seeing the entire church moved, at the voice of its chief, by the incomparable sufferings of Poland. In France, at least, every Catholic worthy the name addressed prayers without ceasing to the divine mercy, that the country of St. Hedwige and Sobieski might one day resume her place, free among the nations. This harmony between the irrepressible aspirations of his patriotism and the daily increasing fervor of his religious sentiments threw over the last years of his life a warm and consoling light.

But before arriving in port, how stormy the voyage! Bound by soul yet more than by the ties of blood to his uncle, Prince Adam Czartoryski, he had been twenty-five years his lieutenant, his coadjutor, and the sharer of his fortunes; like him, too, encountering continually repulse, deception, and injustice, without being embittered or discouraged.

Belgium, always hospitable, took full possession of her nationality in the same year, 1831, when Poland seemed to have lost hers. She immediately opened the ranks of her army to Count Ladislas, with the grade of colonel, a position he had won on the bloody banks of the Vistula.

For fifteen years [Footnote 193] he watched in vain for an opportunity to once more draw his sword in behalf of his own land, or for some cause which might even indirectly serve her interests.

[Footnote 193: From 1832 to 1847.]

He was obliged to content himself with employing his intercourse with the political men of the two great constitutional countries, to secure to the Polish question, in the order of the day, some parliamentary discussion or some diplomatic bias, and to obtain from the French chambers and the English parliament those periodical demonstrations which seemed to him so many protestations of right against the most odious of political crimes; so many guarantees against a proscription which the sad destinies of men too often drew down on them, to the profit and encouragement of injustice.

At length, in 1846, he thought he saw the dawn of better days. In the short counterfeit alliance between Pius IX. and Italian liberty, he hastened, with sixty other Polish officers, to offer their devotedness and military experience to the new pontiff, whom all believed menaced by Austria even more than by the Revolution. From thence he passed as a volunteer into the army of Charles Albert, and shared, by the side of that noble and unfortunate sovereign, in all the vicissitudes of the struggle between Piedmont and Austria. Austria, we must remember, at the time we speak of, was not the liberal Austria of the present day; and no Pole could look on this empire as aught save the author and accomplice of the calamities of his country. Piedmont being defeated and restricted to its ancient limits, it was to Hungary that Count Zamoyski next turned his steps. Hungary was then in a state of insurrection against Austria, but was also a victim herself to an insurrection of her Sclavic population, unwisely irritated. To gain from Hungary a recognition of the rights of these people—rights so misunderstood or ignored by the rest of Europe—was the mission of Count Zamoyski, and for which he was willing to confront new perils. The Russians, however, soon arrived, and, combining their armies with those of Austria and with the revolted Croats, Hungary was soon crushed. After the decisive defeat of Teneswar, the remnants of the Polish legion passed into Servia, and from thence to Turkey.

For two years he occupied himself here in disciplining those indomitable spirits for future contests; for to the honor of the Ottoman Porte be it recorded that it refused the demands of the Russian and Austrian governments for the extradition of the Polish and Hungarian refugees.

During a short revisit which he made to France, the Eastern question arose, and he immediately returned to Turkey. He took part, with the rank of general, in the campaign on the banks of the Danube, and through the entire Crimean war devoted his strength, his rare intelligence, his military experience, to forming regiments of Polish Cossacks, ostensibly for the service of the sultan, but indulging in the hope of seeing them ultimately admitted to the ranks of the allies.

In January, 1856, the preliminaries of the Peace of Paris came to dash aside once more his patriotic day-dreams, and to destroy every chance of resuscitation which had seemed offered to Poland in this rupture, so pompous but so fruitless, between France and England and Russia.

No adequate reason has yet been given for that blind delusion which prevented the powerful allies, in 1855, or Napoleon I., in 1812, from using against Russia the only power which she could not control, to recall Poland to that national existence which was her sacred right; and which, at the same time, was the only efficient guarantee for the independence and security of Europe.

Made desperate by this thwarted expectation, Poland suffered herself, in 1863, to be drawn into that strenuous but unfortunate effort whose miserable consequences are in the memories of all. Count Zamoyski, now suffering with age and infirmities, made one last attempt to prevail on England to unite in some kind of action with France, and not to stand by in silence at those massacres and outrages which Russia perpetrated with such impunity, a mockery to the civilization of the nineteenth century. He failed, and this was his last attempt.

He died, leaving Europe more than ever exposed to perils he had warned her against, more than ever recklessly serving the Muscovite power.

He died, seeing Russia supremely powerful in the East, and free to put the seal on all the bloody hypocrisies of her history: here, making the world resound with her solicitude for the civil and religious liberty of the Cretans, while she crushed out with her unholy foot the last palpitations of Polish freedom, and extirpated, with infernal perfidy, the last vestiges of Polish Catholic faith: there, instigating against regenerated Austria a formidable conspiracy of her Sclavic subjects, while the highways and mines of Siberia are strewn with the skeletons of heroic Poles, whose only crime was to spurn the yoke of those Russians who are a hundred-fold less truly Sclavic than their victims.

The history of Count Ladislas Zamoyski is, then, a sad one; it is the story of a life-long shipwreck.

All his designs were frustrated, all his hopes deceived. Always hastening from disappointment to disappointment, from defeat to defeat, he wearied never, paused never, was successful never.

Deeming no sacrifice too great, and no detail too minute for the service of his country, he was prompt to avail himself of any circumstance or encounter any new risk which might gain for her a friend, remove an error, or stimulate in her behalf the indifferent. Self-armed against disasters, he raised himself from each defeat with the tenacity of an old Roman on the battle-field, where he had been once overthrown, to fall again, wounded and crushed down by an implacable adversity.

It would seem as if so many trials, mental and material, public and private, might suffice to fill that measure of suffering which is the lot of all below. But no! he had still to endure those which would appear more fittingly the portion of the idle and prosperous.

Crippled with wounds and infirmities, the last ten years of his life were passed in physical sufferings which made them one prolonged torture. He endured, during all this time, the prolonged weariness, the distastes, the feebleness of failing health; and he supported them with the same imperturbable patience, the same tranquil and unconquerable courage, which had sustained him through the sad vicissitudes of his public life.

How great the virtue, crowned by those great sufferings! There is in it a grand and mysterious lesson, and one, above all, which God seems to have designed for our instruction and edification; for his character more than his career at all times raised him far above the mass of human kind. No one could approach him without feeling a profound respect before a strength of mind so determined, a patience which never failed; before that singular union of bravery and gentleness, that generous sense of honor, that equanimity, that integrity. Rich in the domestic happiness which Providence accorded to his declining years, he was content to live, content to suffer; yet appreciating any relief, and humbly thankful for those rare moments of respite which were permitted to his numerous infirmities. Without disavowing the aspirations of his youth, he had purified and transformed them in the crucible of self-denial and sacrifice. What remained to him of generous pride was so tempered that the most exacting could not have reproached him. His Christian fervor brightened as the chills of age encircled him; and the destinies and well-being of the church inspired him no less than those of his country.

He gave a proof of this devotion in the past summer, (1867,) when, so broken in health, he went to Rome to lay at the feet of Pius IX. a last homage. In the midst of those fètes of the Centenary of St. Peter, where were gathered the bishops and the faithful of the entire world, except those bound fast and gagged by the Muscovite autocrat, Ladislas Zamoyski appeared, like the living spectre of absent, enchained Poland.

Nor was it only faith: it was still more—charity—which animated this soul, so Christian and chivalrous. How can we depict that compassion and generosity, so irrepressible, toward his destitute compatriots! or how sufficiently admire that charity of forgiveness to his enemies—the pitiless enemies of his nation! Never one word of bitterness crossed his lips.

"What is to be thought of the Russians?" said a friend to him, one day, "and how far are they implicated with the emperor?"

"I never judge them," he replied: "I pray for them."

For us, who are not bound to exercise such superhuman moderation, who are witnesses and not victims of these atrocities, we raise beside the tomb of this just man a cry of grief and indignant surprise.

"Usquequo, Domine sanctus et verus, non judicas et non vindicas, sanguinem nostrum de iis qui habitant in terrâ?"

How long, O Lord! shall crime and falsehood triumph? How long wilt thou leave unpunished this martyrdom of a Christian nation, which will soon have lasted an entire century?

But all rebellious thoughts against the tardiness of divine justice are checked, all the poignancy of sorrow is subdued, by the remembrance alone of the departed dead. He is gone! His long and cruel trials are over! He has entered into light and peace! He lives in the bosom of his God, and his memory will be for ever cherished among men, with the annals of his illustrious house and of his unfortunate country. He leaves behind a name which will be a crown of glory to his children, born in the land of exile where he died, and rocked in their frail cradle on a stormy sea. He leaves a sacred grief, which is a treasure to her alone, to the youthful and admirable woman who gave herself to him in his darkest hour; the intrepid sharer in his vicissitudes and perils, the loving and faithful consoler of his sufferings and decline, and who enjoyed a happiness with him in this world which is to be interrupted only for a few brief days.

Finally, he leaves a great and profitable example to all who have known and loved him; above all, to those who, subjected to slighter trials, submit to them with less patience and less courage.

The Catholic Church And The Bible.

Does the Catholic Church condemn the Bible and forbid her people to circulate and read it?

We answer: NO! On the contrary, the Catholic Church believes the Bible to be the inspired word of God himself, and constantly incites her people to its diligent perusal. In testimony of which, we offer: first, her official declarations; and second, her unvarying practice.

First, her official declarations.

The holy Council of Trent, which closed its sessions in the year 1564, and whose canons and decrees are the voice of the universal church, binding upon every Catholic under pain of sin, distinctly says:

"The Holy OEcumenical and General Council of Trent, ... following the example of the orthodox fathers, does with due veneration and piety receive all the books of the Old and the New Testament, of both which God himself is the immediate author. ... And, lest any doubt should exist as to what books this council has thus received, a catalogue of the same is annexed to this decree. (Here follows a list of the sacred books, as found in. English Catholic Bibles.) Now, if any one shall refuse to receive these books entire, with all their parts, according as they are accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the ancient Latin Vulgate edition, as sacred and canonical, ... let him be anathema." [Footnote 194]

[Footnote 194: Can. et Dec. Conc. Trid. Sess. iv.]

Again, the Pope, who, as the head and mouth-piece of the Catholic Church, administers its discipline and issues orders to which every Catholic, under pain of sin, must yield obedience, has positively declared, "that the faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures: for these are the most abundant sources which ought to be left open to every one, to draw from them purity of morals and of doctrine;" which declaration may be found in the preface to the English Catholic Bibles now in use.

Second, her unvarying practice.

The Catholic Church, from the beginning, has provided effectual means, not only for the distribution of the Bible among her people, but also for their knowledge of the truths which it contains. One of her holy orders is that of Reader, "whose duty," as her catechism says, "is to read the Sacred Scriptures to the people in a clear and distinct voice, and to instruct them in the rudiments of faith." [Footnote 195]

[Footnote 195: Catechism. Cone. Trid. pars. ii. De Ordin.]

Again, from the beginning, it has been made the daily duty of her priests and religious persons to recite "the divine office," which consists of psalms, of readings from the Bible, and of prayers. The new revision of this office made by Gregory VII., in which its different parts were first collected into one volume, became known as the "Breviary," and is still so called. From this was translated and compiled, in great part, the "Daily Morning and Evening Prayer" of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the epistles, gospels, lessons, and psalms of which, thus borrowed, present, as is well known, so large a portion of the Holy Scriptures. Indeed, the Breviary is but the Bible, in a form adapted to devotional uses, and illustrated with pious meditations and devout prayers. Before us lies a copy, published in the year 1632, during the Huguenotic wars and persecutions. It bears the official order of the great Richelieu; and, as we turn over its leaves, we find that a large part of the whole Bible is embraced within its pages, and we perceive that as long as this book can be found in the hands of all her clergy, and is accessible to every one who seeks it, so long, within the borders of the Catholic Church at least, the Holy Scriptures will be widely circulated and intimately known.

Again, in every age, the most eminent and pious of the pastors and scholars of the Catholic Church have devoted their lives to the study and explanation of the Bible. The sermons of the first eight centuries were principally oral commentaries on the sacred text. The great libraries of valuable Christian works, which have come down to us from the primitive church, are made up of volumes directly based on Holy Scripture. Their writers are well known as men of great intellect, of unwearied zeal, of deep and humble piety. Look at this list of some of them: In the second century, Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen; in the third century, Pierius, Pamphilus, Hesychius, and Eusebius; in the fourth century, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin, Chrysostom, and Ephrem; in the fifth century, Cyril, Theodoret, and Isidore of Pelusium; in the sixth century, Gregory the Great, Cassiodorus, Procopius, and Primasius; in the seventh century, Maximus, Isidore of Seville, Julian of Toledo, and John Damascene; in the eighth century, Venerable Bede, Alcuin, and Rabanus Maurus; in the ninth century, Christian Druthmar, Walafridus Strabo, Remigius of Auxerre, and Sedulius; in the tenth century, OEcumenius and Olympiodorus; in the eleventh century, Nicetas, Lanfranc, and Theophylact; in the twelfth century, Euthymius, Anselm, and Rupert; in the thirteenth century, the great Thomas Aquinas and Hugo de Sancto Caro; in the fourteenth century, Nicholas de Lyra, Paul of Burgos, and Gerson; in the fifteenth century, Laurentius Valla, Tostatus, Denis the Carthusian, Marsilius, and Le Fèvre: in the sixteenth century, Cornelius à Lapide, Maldonatus, and Jansen of Ghent; in the seventeenth century, Natalis Alexander and John Baptist du Hamel; in the eighteenth century, the learned Calmet, of whose work the famous Dr. Adam Clarke has written: "This is, without exception, the best comment on the sacred writings ever published, either by Catholics or Protestants." [Footnote 196]

[Footnote 196: Horne's Introduction. Vol. ii. part. iii. chap. V. sec. iii. § 3, Am. ed. 1836.]

Certainly, no age, illuminated with such lights as these, deserves to be called "dark;" no people, taught by such teachers, could ever have been ignorant. And when we remember that, as an eminent Protestant clergyman has said, "the writings of the dark ages are made of the Scriptures;" not merely, "that the writers constantly quoted the Scriptures, and appealed to them as authority on all occasions, but that they thought and spoke and wrote the thoughts and words and phrases of the Bible, and that they did this constantly as the natural mode of expressing themselves," (The Dark Ages. By Rev, S. R. Maidand, D.D. London, 1853;) and remember, further, that this could not be so, unless the people who wrote and those who read alike had free access to Holy Scripture both possessing the books and being permitted to circulate and use them, we shall be far enough from believing that in the Catholic Church the Bible has ever been "a hidden book," or that the doors of its rich treasure-house were ever closed to men.

Again, the efforts of the Catholic Church to preserve and perpetuate the Bible have been unceasing. As early as the fourth century, by the direction of Pope Damasus, St. Jerome entered on the work of preparing a full and perfect copy of the Scriptures. He devoted twelve years to the study of the Hebrew, Syriac, and other oriental languages. He collected at Jerusalem and in the East all the most accurate versions, both of the Old and New Testaments. From these, revised, compared, and corrected with each other, he prepared that Latin version which is commonly called the "Vulgate," and which, as all biblical critics allow, is the most perfect and complete copy of the Bible which now exists. During the period between the fourth and sixteenth centuries, every great monastery (and Europe was full of them) had its "scriptorium," or writing-chamber, in which copies of the Scriptures were constantly produced. Of the 1400 manuscripts of the New Testament which are now extant, not one was written earlier than the fourth century, or by other than Catholic hands; and Protestants themselves have no higher origin for their Scriptures than these Catholic copies, and no surer ground of reliance on their accuracy than the fidelity and learning of Catholic scholars. How easy, if the Catholic Church condemned the Bible, would it have been to neglect this multiplication of the sacred books, and to silently destroy existing copies! Yet those who depend altogether on her labors for their boasted Scripture, have said, and still will say, that she fears the Bible and would gladly banish it from men. But when the age of printing came, her efforts were redoubled. According to the popular idea, translations of the Scripture into the vulgar tongues were never made before the Reformation, or even till long after it, by Catholics. Nothing could be more false. The Bible, either wholly or in part, had been translated and published in no less than seven of the common languages of Europe, before Luther and his Reform were ever dreamed of. In the year 1466 a translation into German was printed, copies of which still exist. This translation passed through sixteen different editions at Strasburg, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, in the course of a few years, and was followed by another translation, of which three editions were published at Wittemberg in 1470, 1483, and 1490; two at Cologne in 1470 and 1480; one at Lubeck in 1494; one at Haberstadt in 1522; and one each at Mayence, at Strasburg, and at Basle, in 1517. Luther first published his translation in 1530, nine years after the Diet at Worms and twelve years after he had turned Reformer. Before his time, therefore, there were no less than twenty-seven different editions of the Bible in the German language in circulation among the people, besides almost innumerable editions in Latin, a tongue with which the clergy and the learned of that age were well acquainted. In the year 1471 a translation of the Bible into Italian was printed both at Rome and Venice, and passed through thirteen different editions before the year 1525. Two different translations into French were also published; one in 1478, which was printed in seventeen successive editions before 1546; and the other in 1512, which also passed through many editions. In 1478 a translation into Spanish was published, which was reprinted in 1515 with the express sanction of the Spanish Inquisition. In 1475, a translation into Flemish was published at Cologne, of which seven new editions were printed before 1530. In 1488, the Bible, in the Bohemian language, was printed at Prague, and again produced at Cutna in 1498, and at Venice in 1506 and 1511. An edition in Sclavonian was also published at Cracow in the first part of the same century. Add to these the different versions made in the "dark ages," and you have no less than twenty-two translations and seventy printed editions of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongues of England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Sweden, prepared by the Catholic pastors and scholars of Europe, and distributed among their people, before Luther and his Bible were ever heard of. When Protestant historians relate that this renowned Reformer never saw a Bible till he was twenty years of age, and had been a student at the university upward of two years, and depict his wonder and delight at its discovery, (Hist. Ref. D'Aubigné, vol. i. p. 131,) we hardly know whether to condemn the ignorance of the Reformer or the dishonesty of the historian, one of which must be true. Circumstances certainly seem to cast the odium of falsehood on the latter, rather than that of unparalleled stupidity upon the former.

After the Reformation began, the Catholic Church applied herself to preserve and perpetuate the Scriptures with the same diligence and zeal as of old. A new translation into German appeared in 1534, and passed through twenty different editions within the century. Another was printed in 1537, and also passed through several editions. Still another was published in 1630, and during the past fifty years there have been several others. Between the years 1525 and 1567, eight different editions of the Italian translation of 1471 were printed, with the formal permission of the Holy Office at Rome. Another translation appeared in 1532, which passed through ten editions within twenty years. Another still was published in 1538, 1546, and 1547, and more recently there have been several others; the principal of which is that of Antony Martini, which in 1778 received the written endorsement and recommendation of Pope Pius VI. Thirty-nine different editions of the French translation of Le Fèvre, as revised by the doctors of Louvain, were published between 1550 and the year 1700, since which latter date many new versions, and many reprints of former versions, have appeared in France; of one of which the great Bossuet is said to have distributed fifty thousand copies with his own hands. In Spain, likewise, the Bible, and especially the New Testament, has been frequently reprinted. The most famous Spanish edition is the renowned Polyglot Bible of Cardinal Ximenes, in six folio volumes, published at Alcala in 1515. In the year 1582, the New Testament in English was issued from Rheims, and in 1609, the Old Testament, in the same language, was printed at Douay, the two together forming the Douay Bible, an edition which, if not the most elegant in phraseology, is still generally admitted by all critics to be more faithful and correct than any other version in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. This latter version has appeared in almost every form, from the largest and most ornate to the smallest and least expensive, and may be found in almost every Catholic family which possesses the ability to read it. Nearly the same may be said of all other versions in the common languages of the present age. They were intended not for the learned, but for the people. The encouragement which they received came from the people, not in opposition to, but in consequence of, the permission and recommendation of the pastors of the church: and it is simply incredible that all these different translations should have been made, and these numerous editions printed, unless the Bible had been freely read and freely circulated among the Catholic masses both of Europe and America.

So far, therefore, from ever hiding the Holy Scriptures, or even keeping them in the background, history proves, beyond the possibility of doubt or denial, that the Catholic Church has always occupied the foremost position in the preservation and diffusion of the written word of God; and that to her efforts, and to her efforts alone, is due not only the continued existence of the Bible itself, but also of those vast treasures of research and investigation which tend to throw light upon its meaning, and enforce its teachings on the hearts of those who read it; nay more, that Protestants themselves possess a Bible, only so far as the same church has bestowed it on them; and that their commentaries and expositions are but mere digests and abridgments of the laborious and extensive works of Catholic philosophers and theologians.

How, then, when the Council of Trent—which is the unerring voice of the universal church—when the Pope, who is the head and ruler of the faithful—when the unvarying practice of all ages of Catholics throughout the world—proclaims that the Catholic Church believes the Bible to be the inspired word of God, and one of the great means for the enlightenment and instruction of mankind—how, then, can Protestants ask whether the Catholic Church condemns the Bible, and forbids its members to circulate and read it? Does not all history answer them? Do not thousands of sermons, homilies, and commentaries answer them? Do not hundreds of translations, scattered over all ages and all lands, answer them? Does not their own possession of the Bible at the present day, which they profess to prize so highly, and for which they are indebted to that same church, answer them? How, then, can they believe those slanders which have, for so many years, been uttered against the church of God in reference to the Scriptures? Above all, how can they repeat them, after the often made and complete demonstration of their falsehood?

Still it is asked, What, then, about these Bible burnings, this actual hinderance, in particular instances, to the use of the Bible? And why does not the Catholic Church join with the great Bible societies of the age in the diffusion of the Bible, or at least form societies of her own for the same purpose?

These are important questions, and questions, too, which must be answered, if the preceding demonstration would have its full effect upon the mind; and for this reason we will now consider them.

What is the Bible? Very few Protestants ever seem to know, or at least to remember, what the Bible really is. Most of those whom we have met appear to regard it as a book, delivered in its present form directly by God to man. But this is not so. On the contrary, the Bible is a collection of different books, written at various periods during the space of more than fifteen hundred years. Some of them were originally in Hebrew, some in Chaldaic, some in Greek. They had no less than thirty-six different authors, most of whom were widely separated from each other either in place or time; and they were neither collected into one volume nor arranged in the shape of the present Bible, until many years after the establishment of the Christian church.

Now, it is evident that, when we say, "The Bible is inspired," "The Bible is the word of God," we mean just this, and nothing more, namely, that the original manuscript, which any one of these authors wrote with his own hand, exactly as dictated to him by the Holy Ghost, was inspired, and contained the revelation of God. When a copy of that original manuscript was made, the copy was not inspired. If it precisely corresponded with its original, it would give a perfectly correct idea of that original; if it differed from it, it would, so far, fail to give such idea; and would, to that extent, fail to be a sure guide to the knowledge of the written word of God. So with a translation; if it rendered the ideas contained in the original manuscript into another language so exactly that a reader of the translation would receive precisely the same impressions that were intended to be conveyed by the original—supposing them to be rightly understood by him—then would the translation, in its turn, make known the exact truth of God. But if there was in this the smallest deviation, and the ideas imparted by it were not precisely those imparted by the original, then it would not convey the word of God. And since not one of these original manuscripts is now preserved, it becomes evident that there is not an inspired book in existence; but, at the best, only copies and translations of books that were inspired, but have long ago been lost or destroyed.

But even these copies which we now possess are not first copies, made directly from the original manuscripts themselves. Moses wrote his five books of the Old Testament upward of three thousand years ago; and the oldest existing copy of them was made within the past nine hundred years. How many successive generations of copies, so to speak, filled up the intermediate two thousand years, no one can tell. The same is true, in their degree, of the remaining books; copy of these also being made from copy, and so on, until the art of printing was discovered. All of these copies, both of the Old and the New Testament, were made by hand, in rude characters, and with ruder implements, while languages were constantly changing, and different ideas were being conveyed to different generations by the same words and phrases. From these copies all of the modern translations have been made, and these translations are the "Bible," as commonly read and circulated among men.

Now, we ask in all candor, what certainty there is, on Protestant grounds, that any of these modern translations is the real word of God? To be such, the translation must be an infallible rendering from the copy; the copy must have been exactly like the preceding copy, and that, again, exactly like its predecessor, and so on back to the original inspired manuscript itself. And are Protestants so certain of this, that they have any right to feel sure that, when they open their Bible, the ideas which they receive are precisely those which God intended that the words of Moses, Samuel, Daniel, or the Evangelists should convey? And yet, unless they are sure of it, how can they really believe what they read in it, and stake the salvation of their souls on the correctness and fidelity of copies and translations, about which they can never, by any possible evidence short of a new revelation, become satisfied?

Our object is not, however, to destroy faith in the Bible as the word of God, (a truth which, on Catholic grounds, is thoroughly demonstrable,) although it is worth while to reflect on the difficulties which surround the attempt to make it the sole teacher of divine revelation; but to call to mind how important, how absolutely necessary, it is, that the Bible which we read should be a true translation from a correct copy of the original inspired book. And we think the reader will agree with us when we say, that the greatest care to secure correctness is none too great, and the most rigid exclusion of all erroneous, or even suspicious, copies and translations cannot be too rigid; but that, on the contrary, it is the duty of every Christian to obtain, and of the Christian church to provide, the very best and most perfect Bibles possible; and then to abandon and condemn all others.

And this is exactly what the Catholic Church has always done and is doing at this day. We have already mentioned the labors of St. Jerome. This holy man lived at an age when most of the old manuscripts were still existing, when those copies of the Old Testament which had been in use during the life of Christ had not all perished, and when the originals of the New Testament, or, at least, copies of them which had been made under apostolic supervision, were still attainable. All these, and many others—Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Greek, Latin, and Syriac—he collected, and, having thoroughly compared them with each other, and restored the original text to its highest possible purity, he translated it into the Latin tongue, which was then, and probably always will be, the most definite and expressive of human languages. This translation is called the "Vulgate." It is the most complete and accurate version of the Bible in existence, and the only one which was made from the originals, or first copies, of the New Testament, and from authoritative copies of the Old. Protestant critics have said of it: "The Vulgate may be reasonably pronounced, upon the whole, a good and faithful version." [Footnote 197] "It is allowed to be, in general, a faithful translation, and sometimes exhibits the sense of Scripture with greater accuracy than the more modern versions." [Footnote 198] "The Latin Vulgate preserves many true readings where the modern Hebrew copies are corrupted." [Footnote 199] "It is in general skilful and faithful, and often gives the sense of Scripture better than modern versions." [Footnote 200]

[Footnote 197: Campbell's Dissertations on the Gospels. Diss. X. part iii. § 10.]

[Footnote 198: Horne's Int. Vol. i. p. i. ch. iii. § iii. p. 277. Am. ed. 1836.]

[Footnote 199: Ibid.]

[Footnote 200: Gerard's Institutes. Chap. iv. sec. 4, p. 82. Am. ed. 1823.]

This most excellent Vulgate edition is the very one which the Catholic Church has sanctioned as the authorized text of Scripture. The Council of Trent decreed, "that the ancient and Vulgate edition ... should be deemed authentic in public readings, disputes, sermons, and expositions, and that no one should dare or presume, on any pretext, to reject it." [Footnote 201]

[Footnote 201: Sess. iv.]

Moreover, as the original manuscript of St. Jerome was no more imperishable than others which had gone before it, and as it could be perpetuated only in copies, the church has put forth every effort to secure these in abundance and perfection. They were all written in her own monasteries, under the very eyes of her priests and bishops. They have been subject to constant and thorough revision. When printing was invented, and Bibles began to multiply on every side, (some of them filled with dangerous errors and perversions,) she remedied this evil by stringent legislation. Thus, the same council says: "Desiring to impose some limit upon printers in this matter, who, ... without licenses from their ecclesiastical superiors, do print these books of Holy Scripture, ... this Holy Synod decrees and declares, that hereafter the Holy Scriptures, and especially the ancient and Vulgate edition, shall be printed with the utmost exactness; and that it shall be lawful for no one to print, or to have printed, any books concerning sacred things, ... unless they shall have been examined and approved by the ordinary. ... This approval shall be given in writing, and shall appear, either written or printed, authentically in the front of the book; and both the approval and the examination shall be made gratis, to the end that good things may be countenanced and evil things condemned." [Footnote 202]

[Footnote 202: Sess. iv.]

In this manner has the Catholic Church secured the preservation of the pure text of Scripture. Starting at an age when it was possible, if it ever was, to obtain an exact version of the word of God, she, by the hand of St. Jerome, prepared one which has stood the test of the most hostile criticism. Exercising over this her constant vigilance, she brought it down to the age of printing. Then, rigidly excluding all editions which could not undergo the most searching scrutiny, she openly endorses all those which are genuine and faithful, so that the Catholic reader of to-day, seeing in his Latin Bible the approval of his bishop, and knowing that no bishop could sanction any false version without being immediately discovered and punished, knows also that what he reads and studies is the Holy Scripture, as Moses and the prophets wrote it, as Christ and his apostles used it, and as the church of all ages has received it.

Advancing one step further, the care of the church next manifests itself in the Bibles for the people. These are, of necessity, translations into the vulgar tongues. They are all made from the Vulgate by persons duly authorized for the purpose, and must also be certified as correct by ecclesiastical authority, before they can be printed, sold, or read. Take, for instance, the English translation, commonly called the Douay Bible. This version was prepared by some of the most eminent English scholars on the continent of Europe, who possessed a wide acquaintance with the Greek and Hebrew as well as with the Latin and more modern tongues. This version is admitted by all critics to be exact and literal, and to exhibit, as far as a translation can do so, the precise sense of the original text of Scripture. It has received the approbation of the Holy See and of innumerable bishops; and every new edition bears the official recommendation of the ecclesiastical superior, who vouches for its completeness and its purity. It is hardly possible that, with all these precautions, the Douay Bible should fail to be, in fidelity of rendering, the most perfect copy of the Scriptures that exists in the English tongue.

But the Catholic Church has not stopped even here. No one denies that in the Bible there are many passages difficult to understand, and that it is impossible for those who have no access to the original manuscript and no opportunities for critical research, to ascertain the true meaning of these passages without external aid. The object of commentaries and expositions is to supply this aid; but these have long ago grown so voluminous and costly as to be beyond the reach of ordinary men. And so, to meet this final difficulty, the church accompanies every translation into a vulgar tongue with proper notes and comments, prepared by competent and pious persons, for the illustration of the sacred text.

From this brief sketch of what the Catholic Church has done concerning the Bible, it will be perceived:

1. That the church possesses, in the Latin Vulgate, the earliest, purest, and most exact version of the Holy Scriptures which exists in the whole world;

2. That her translations of the Vulgate into the languages of the people present them with the purest and most exact version of the Bible which they can possibly obtain;

3. That by her notes and comments she affords to them freedom from serious error and mistake in their perusal of the sacred text.

Now, for a moment, let us turn to the Bibles which Protestantism offers, and inquire as to their reliability. The ordinary translations of Protestants are made from Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. These manuscripts, as we have seen, are copies, not originals, and, of course, are not inspired. They are, therefore, reliable so far as they present the exact ideas presented by their originals, and no further; and the fidelity with which they do this depends, in a great measure, upon their own antiquity and their nearness to the originals themselves. But not a manuscript of the Old Testament in Hebrew now exists which dates back further than the eleventh century. The oldest extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are not older than the fourth century; and these are confessedly imperfect, and, in some places, entirely wanting. Out of these manuscripts and later ones, however, Protestant translators are first compelled to select a text which shall represent, as near as they can make it do so, the original Greek and Hebrew, and then, from this text make their translation.

To the first translation this work presented no small difficulties. They were unskilled in the languages in which these manuscripts were written. the manuscripts disagreed extensively among themselves, and many of them were without lines or punctuation marks, and in characters long fallen into disuse. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first Protestant versions were, both in the text and in the translation, exceedingly erroneous, and in some portions, utterly unreliable. Most of these difficulties have vanished with advancing years. Protestant scholars have become versed in Greek and Hebrew. They have learned to read with accuracy the ancient characters in which the manuscripts were written, and their extensive research among the various versions has done much to clear their text from ambiguity. But the fact still remains, that the best Greek or Hebrew text, which they can reach, is later by many centuries, and more fallible by numerous successive copyings, than those from which the Latin Vulgate was prepared; and, consequently, can bear no comparison in purity and genuineness with that which St. Jerome produced from the first copies, if not from the originals themselves, of the New Testament, and from versions of the Old, which Christ had sanctioned by his personal use. And it is this difference, between the sources of the text of Catholic and Protestant Bibles, which gives the Catholic version its deserved preeminence, and has won for it the encomiums to which we have referred.

Extending our view to the translations made and used by Protestants we perceive this difference still subsisting. Most of these were the result of private enterprise, and never have received the sanction of great ecclesiastical authority. Even the ordinary English, or "King James" version, (which is the one in common circulation in this country,) was a private venture of the king whose name it bears; and though indorsed by him as the head of the state church of England, it has never received the approval of any authority which can strictly be called ecclesiastical. The people who now use it have no other guarantee of its correctness than the fact that their fathers used it before them. They look in vain for any mark upon its pages which shall assure them, on an authority they know to be reliable, that what they read is the true word of God. On the contrary, if they examine their own writers, they find the sentiment prevailing the the "king's version" is not the word of God. It is accused of being "without fidelity," "ambiguous and incorrect, even in matters of the highest importance;" [Footnote 203] and a well-known commentator has even said, "That it is not so just a representation of the inspired originals, as merits to be implicitly relied on for determining the controverted articles of the Christian faith." [Footnote 204]

[Footnote 203: Horne's Int. Bibliographical Appendix, p. 37, Am. ed. 1836.]

[Footnote 204: Macknight. General Preface to Epistles, sec, 2, vol i. p. 26, Am. ed. 1810.]

These general statements are applicable to other Protestant translations as well as to the English. None of them are perfect, or are even claimed to be so. Each is in turn vilified and condemned by the authors of the others; and not one of them has yet received the sanction of such an authority as can assure the reader that he will find upon its pages the revelations of God. [Footnote 205]

[Footnote 205: In 1833, the Rev. T. Curtis, an English Protestant clergyman, published a work On the Errors and Corruptions in Modern Protestant Bibles. The work contains "Four Letters to the Hon. and Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop of London, with specimens of the intentional and other departures from the authorized standard, to which is added a postscript, containing the complaints of a London committee of ministers on the subject; the reply of the universities, and a report on the importance of the alterations made." In the course of his work, Mr. Curtis gives various instances of "the largest church Bibles" "found very erroneous." On one occasion "an important part of a text he had taken in the lesson of the day, to his great astonishment was not in the church Bible when he came to read the lesson. In a note on the same page, Mr. Curtis says: "The church Bible still in use in the parish church of St. Mary's, Islington, is a remarkably erroneous one. A clergyman, who some years ago officiated in this parish, assured me he was occasionally at a loss to proceed in reading the lessons from it. One passage (l John i. 4) has, I have reason to believe, been read erroneously in this church four times a year for many years." Mr. Curtis says, (page 80,) "The British and Foreign Bible Society have never circulated a single copy of the Scriptures that has not contained THOUSANDS of intentional departures from the authorized version!" Who can now say with truth that the pure word of God is read or heard in Protestant churches or families?]

Here, then, the matter comes to a distinct issue between the Catholic and Protestant Churches. The Catholic Church has a reliable and accurate text from which to translate; a competent and literal translation, containing all sufficient notes and explanations; and never publishes a copy of even this without the express sanction of one whom her people know to be able to judge and impartial[ly] to decide on its fidelity and truth. The Protestant churches, on the other hand, have a text confessedly corrupt and unreliable; innumerable contradictory translations, each of which is admitted to be, in many respects, erroneous, and none of which enjoys the sanction of any spiritual authority. How could the Catholic Church do less than to command those of her children who wish to read the Bible, to read the one which she has provided for them? How could she do less than expose to them the faults and errors of the Protestant translations, and forbid their use by the faithful? What right would this church, what right would any church, have to be called a spiritual guide, if, having the pure wheat herself, she permitted those who follow her to feed on coarse grain, gathered from the store-house of her enemies? In reference to such a matter, reason and common-sense dictate a rigidly exclusive policy; and that is just the policy which has been, and is now, pursued by the Catholic Church. Her rules are few and simple, but sufficient. They are these:

1. That those who would read the Scriptures in a vulgar tongue must read a Catholic version.

2. That not only must this version be a Catholic one, but it must also have been approved by the proper spiritual authority.

3. That the version must not only be Catholic and properly approved, but must be accompanied by approved notes and explanations.

4. That those who in the judgment of their pastors would derive more hurt than good from the perusal of the Scriptures, may be forbidden to read them altogether.

Strict as these rules may seem, we believe that any one who reviews the reasons for them will now say, that at least the first three of them are eminently just, and that the Catholic Church, in prescribing and enforcing them, has acted wisely and for the best interests of men. And when we further state that she has never prevented the circulation of any Bible, or taken any Bible from her people, or burned any Bible, except those false, imperfect translations which, so far as they are imperfect, are not the word of God, we believe that it will be admitted that in this also she has done nothing but her duty toward the people committed to her care.

But that the fourth rule is also just, we think a moment's reflection will determine. At the date of the Reformation, as we have seen, the Bible had been largely printed in many languages. When Luther and the other reformers began to preach, they pointed to their own translations of the Scriptures as the sole divine authority, and bade all the people to read them and examine for themselves. And hence arose a Babel of religions, of which we, at this day, can form no adequate conception. Text was pitted against text, author against author. Men claimed the most outrageous license under the name of Christian liberty. The sacred words of God were bandied from mouth to mouth in jest and song and ribaldry. The contagion spread even into the borders of the Catholic Church. The danger was most imminent that, by this fearful abuse, men might lose all respect, not only for true learning, but also for the Bible and for Christianity itself. It became absolutely necessary to put a check somewhere; and the Council of Trent, therefore, decreed that in order "to repress all that rashness by which the words of Holy Scripture are turned about and perverted to profane uses, to wit, to buffoonery, to fables, vanities, detractions, impious superstitions, devilish incantations, divinations, lots, and even impious libels," no one should dare to take the words of Holy Scripture in any manner for these uses, but that all such "presumers upon, and violators of, the word of God," should be punished. [Footnote 206]

[Footnote 206: Sess. iv.]

When further measures became necessary, on account of the increasing turmoil and disputes, the rule which we have cited was adopted; a rule under which no one who is able to be profited by the reading of the Bible was ever hindered from perusing it, and by which, probably, thousands who, but for it, might have made utter shipwreck of their souls through the abuse of God's holy word, have been saved from pride and error. But this rule is now virtually rescinded. The occasion for its exercise has long since passed away. The increasing learning of biblical scholars, the progress of intelligence among the masses, the subsidence of the wild storm of fanaticism and impiety which marked the age of its enactment, have removed the necessity for enforcing it; and the sole restraint now placed upon the reading of the Scriptures, is that contained in those three rules which we have seen to be so wise and just.

How then, when no conditions are imposed upon the use of the original Greek, Hebrew, or Latin texts of Scripture, and when only such ones are imposed upon the use of popular translations as tend to give the people a more accurate and reliable version of the word of God, how can it be said, with even the semblance of truth, that the Catholic Church forbids or even discourages the reading of the Bible; or how can it be denied that, in providing her children with complete and accurate Bibles, she has given them every inducement to their careful and continued study?

But now we think we hear it asked, with redoubled earnestness:

If the Catholic Church possesses the most perfect of all copies of the Bible, and really desires it to be read among her people, why does she not coëperate with the existing Bible societies in its diffusion, or, at least, form such societies of her own?

The answer is an easy one. The commandment which the Catholic Church received from Christ was, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel," not "Go, distribute Bibles;" and the commandment which she received she has obeyed. The energies, the money, which Protestants would have expended in printing and circulating translations of the Scriptures, she has expended in founding churches, hospitals, convents, and seminaries, and in providing the whole world with missionaries, by whose labors, nations, to whom the Bible could have no access, have been subjugated to the faith. She recognizes but one means for the conversion of mankind, and that is, the voice of the living teacher; and never can she substitute another in its stead.

Moreover, God gave the sacred books of the Old Testament to his own Israel, not to heathens. Our Lord, through his apostles, bestowed on Christians, not on pagans, the inestimable treasures of the New. The Bible is for those who believe already, for the "man of God," "that he may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works," not for the infidel and heathen, who perhaps read it, but are infidels and heathens still. Such is the will of God, as the Catholic Church has received the same, and the facts of history prove that she is right. For when Protestantism arose, its great aim was to spread the Bible. Its history has been the history of Bible-circulation, and in the Bible Society has culminated the Reformation. These societies have labored bravely,0. We read that previous to the year 1834, a single society in Germany had distributed nearly 3,000,000 copies of the entire Bible, and 2,000,000 more of the New Testament. That by another society in Great Britain, over 35,000,000 copies of the Bible, or New Testament, had been put into circulation before 1859; and that another in New York publishes every year more than 250,000 Bibles, and twice that number of New Testaments, and parts of Scripture. But what are the results? Where are the nations which have been added to the Christian fold? Where are the signs of well-developed and intelligent piety in the great Protestant empires of the age? Have not their own writers told us that the boundaries of Protestantism are the same to-day that they were when Luther left it—that no new nations have been added to its numbers, and, with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon portion of this continent, that no new territory has been subjected to its sway; that for the heathen it has done comparatively nothing, and for the irreligious of its own lands but little more? Look at the United States, for instance, all of whose people come of good Christian stock. The census of 1860 fixes the population at over 30,000,000, while a census of professing Christians, of all Protestant denominations, estimates their number at less than 6,000,000. Is the proportion greater in Germany or in England? And what a comment is this upon the boast of these societies, that they evangelize the world, and that the work they are performing is the work of God!

And has the Catholic Church by preaching done no better? While men yet lived who heard the voice of Luther, the Catholic preachers of Europe had won back to the church more than one half of what she lost by the Reformation. In a few years longer the continent of South America, the Canadas, and thousands of the inhabitants of India, China, and Japan, were sheltered in her bosom. Another century, and again the Catholic faith was blossoming in England, and springing green and vigorous from the soil of our own land. To-day where is the country in which she is not strong and valorous, strong in the blood of her martyrs, valorous in the surety of her victory?

Does history leave a doubt upon the mind as to the true means of Christian labor? Or who can wonder that the Catholic Church refuses to substitute the human means for the divine, or even to waste her energies and money on what experience has shown to be so fruitless? She has the Bible for her children. She places it within the reach of all. Those who are able, can buy it for themselves. To those who are unable to buy, she gives it when they ask. But never has she taken pains to strew the pure pearls of written revelation underneath the feet of infidels and heathen—mindful that, as the Lord warned her, "they will turn again and rend you."

In conclusion, let us ask of every Christian reader a single favor more. It is, that he will candidly examine the best authorities upon this important subject; that he will carefully reflect upon the reasons we have offered, and decide for himself the great questions which we have tried to answer. And when he finds, as he surely will, that the Catholic Church does not condemn the Bible, or forbid her people to circulate and read it—that she has never prohibited or burned a Bible which she did not know to be erroneous and liable to lead her children into error—that she has never cast her lot in with the Bible society, simply because she follows the command of Christ—let him undo the evil he, perhaps, has done, in stating that concerning her which he now knows is false, and manfully assert the truth he now has learned, thus doing justice to the church of God.

[Footnote 207(No reference *): Macaulay's Misc., art. Ranke's History of the Popes.]

Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's
Life Of St. Paula.
In Three Chapters.
Concluded.

Chapter III.

The government of Paula in her newly founded monastery was admirable, and she herself was the example of all virtues, as was also Eustochium. The fame of her rule spread throughout the East, and went back to Rome, where Marcella still lived and gloried in her friend.

The chief happiness of the recluses was to study the Scriptures, which they now read from beginning to end. Jerome read with them, explaining everything. His grotto was not far off, and he passed his nights there, by the light of a lamp, surrounded with manuscripts and assisted by others copying for him; for he was now growing old, and his failing eyesight no longer allowed of his enduring the fatigue of writing. He resumed the study of the eastern dialects in order the better to comprehend the original of the holy works, and, encouraged by Paula and Eustochium, resumed his work of translation, which was continued for nearly twenty years under their saintly influence.

At the end of three years Paula's monasteries, church, and hospital were all finished, with their surrounding walls, which in those times were so necessary a protection from the raids of the neighboring Arabs.

The number of the recluses had increased, and Paula now divided them into three communities, each one having an abbess or mother at its head, after the plan of St. Pacomius.

During the week their vows of enclosure prevented all intercourse with the outer world. They all went on Sunday to the church at Bethlehem; for the holy sacrifice of the Mass was not offered up at their own chapel, St. Jerome never having deemed himself worthy to mount the steps of the altar, such was his profound humility; and Vincentius, the only priest they had beside, did not attempt to officiate where Jerome dared not.

Paula was the soul of her communities. Her austerities were as great as her charities, and these were without number. St. Jerome represents her like a devoted mother to each and all of her spiritual daughters, loving them all and studying their characters equally, in order to guide each one according to her individual nature and for the best. Intellectual activity was greatly encouraged among them by her, and she took care to furnish them with books and food for the mind. In this Jerome was of great assistance to her. His convent was the dwelling of science and letters as well as of asceticism. He had around him many men of vast erudition, who in taking care of their souls did not forswear the paths of learning, and in solitude pursued their studies. They also wrote books which were read with great avidity by Paula and her religious family. Jerome himself, in addition to his great works, composed many pious biographies, and among others the life of St. Epiphanius, at the particular request of Paula. The latter had now taught her daughters to copy the Psalms, which Jerome had translated at Rome by the order of Pope Damasus. This was a work of importance, as exactness was necessary in order to repair the harm done to the work by neglect of the original manuscripts. Copying thus became universal in all monasteries, owing to the impetus given to it by Paula, and to it we are indebted for the preservation of much that is of inestimable value to Christianity.

Paula now urged Jerome to revise all his various translations of the Holy Scriptures, and this prodigious work was concluded by him as early as the year 390. The book was dedicated to Paula and Eustochium. To Paula particularly, palmam ferat qui meruit, great praise is due for the holy influence she exercised for so many years over St. Jerome, to such a noble purpose, and which produced such fruits in the translation of the Bible called the Vulgate, still used in the church after the lapse of so many centuries.

All these pious labors gave great renown to Paula's monasteries, and she who had thought to hide herself from the world, saw the curious world appear at her gates, attracted by the beacon light of Bethlehem. Her buildings could scarcely contain the visitors who flocked to see her. St. Augustine himself had sent his beloved friend, Alypius, across the seas to witness these wonders and to see Jerome and Paula. Augustine afterward wrote to Jerome, thus beginning a friendship between these two great men, one of whom was just risen above the horizon of the church, while the other great luminary was on the decline, though spreading out his rays in all the splendor of the setting sun.

But that which most astonished the pilgrims to Bethlehem was not Jerome nor any other inhabitant of this holy place, but Paula in the midst of her virgins. "What country," says St. Jerome, "does not send hither its pilgrims to see Paula, who eclipses us all in humility? She has attained that earthly glory from which she fled; for in flying from it she found it, because glory follows virtue as shadows follow the light."

Among all the visits paid to the recluses, none filled them with so much joy as that of the venerable Epiphanius, whose early lessons had had so much to do with the religious training of Paula. He, too, was delighted; he had seen nothing more perfect in the desert. The order, the prayerful and fervent nuns, the austere and laborious monks, the wonderful intellectual activity, amazed him. He remained some time with his friends at Bethlehem, praising God for what he saw.

About this time the discussions on Origenism began to trouble the church of Alexandria, and finally penetrated to Jerusalem and to Bethlehem. Jerome was estranged from Rufinus and Melanie, and others of his early friends, by differing with them on the subject of this celebrated heresy. Paula was afflicted at this, and foresaw clouds in the future which did not fail to burst on her own monasteries. The great doctrinal combats of the fourth century, in which the church was destined to come off victorious, Paula would gladly have avoided entirely, but in spite of herself she became involved in them. Her sorrow was great when she saw her monasteries as well as St. Jerome and herself excluded from the Holy Sepulchre because of their clinging to their old friend St. Epiphanius, who was the champion of orthodoxy and the great antagonist of Origenism, The ordination of a priest for the monasteries was the ostensible cause of their being put under the ban. This priest was Paulinianus, the brother of Jerome, and the validity of his ordination by Epiphanius was questioned by John, the Bishop of Jerusalem, on the ground of the youth of Paulinianus, but in reality because John, instigated by Rufinus, was profoundly irritated against Jerome and Epiphanius on account of his own leanings toward the doctrine of Origen. He forbade the entrance of the church of the Nativity or of the Holy Sepulchre to all who considered the ordination of Paulinianus canonical. This, of course, included the recluses of Bethlehem. Their dismay was great.

Epiphanius did not consider it derogatory to his dignity for him to bend his white head before the younger bishop and sue for clemency for others. He explained the great want of a priest at the monasteries, and the motives for the ordination of Paulinianus, and he begged John, for the sake of charity, to cease such persecution; and then the illustrious patriarch, on his knees, conjured him to abjure the false doctrines that had divided them.

But John would not yield, and talked only of the offence of the uncanonical ordination. Whereupon, Epiphanius thought it his duty to expose him, and demanded of the recluses that they should suspend all communion with the bishop of Jerusalem until the latter should renounce his errors.

Notwithstanding this moderation, the rancor of John burst upon them. All ecclesiastical functions were forbidden Jerome and Vincentius. Paula's catechumens were refused baptism, and his wrath went so far as to deny religious burial to the hermits as if they were excommunicated. Paula suffered inwardly from this warfare, so different from the quiet and repose she longed for. Herself untouched by the arguments of the heretics, she became an object of envy. But the voice of calumny could not disturb the serenity of her mind, and by no word or sign did she ever show impatience or anger. She endeavored also to console St. Jerome for the wounds he had received. She loved to quote Scripture to him, to soothe his mind. It was in the Bible that she always found strength to endure every evil.

Finally, Bishop John, carrying his hatred to Jerome to its climax, passed a decree of banishment against him. Jerome, worn out by contention, wished to depart at once, but Paula said to him these touching words: "They hate us and would crush us, but let us return patience for hatred, humility for arrogance. Does not St. Paul bid us return good for evil? And when our conscience tells us that our sufferings do not proceed from sin, we are very certain that the afflictions of this world are only the assurance of eternal reward. Bear, then, with the trials that assail you and do not quit our beloved Bethlehem."

In this way Paula sustained and soothed the old monk by the delicacy and serenity of her own noble soul, which lived so high up in the love of God that the storms of this world passed by leaving her unharmed.

After a while Jerome was freed from this phase of persecution by the Metropolitan of Palestine, Cesarius, who was a prudent and wise man. These perils ended, Paula encouraged him to recommence his great labors on the Bible, and also to renew his correspondence with his friends, and to think no more of this painful episode, but to suffer the tempest without to rage and no longer disturb him. [sic]

We will turn away from these discussions, at which we have glanced but cursorily, though unavoidably, to rest our minds in the contemplation of virtue.

Jerome now wrote more of his most admirable letters, and Paula continued the even tenor and pious practices of her life. She received a visit from Fabiola, who came from Rome in search of that peace and solitude which she believed could be best found in Bethlehem. This visit gave great joy to the recluses; for Fabiola could tell them of all their friends in Rome, of Paulina and Pammachius, of Toxotius and his wife Laeta, and of the young Paula, called after her venerable grandmother. She brought them messages from Marcella and the Aventine. While Fabiola was with them, they resumed the habits of former years, and read the Holy Scriptures together, Jerome explaining it to them. The ardor of Fabiola was wonderful. After she had ended her visit and left Bethlehem, much was done by Rufinus and Melanie to estrange her from her old friends. But she could not be moved and had determined to settle near them.

At this time, however, dark rumors of invasion threw consternation among the quiet inhabitants of the monasteries. It was rumored that the Huns threatened Jerusalem. Other cities had already been besieged, and they were now before Antioch. Arabia, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt were filled with terror. On all sides preparations for defence were being made, and the walls of Jerusalem, too long neglected, were now under repair.

To save her monasteries from insult, Paula meditated flight, and conducted her whole community to the sea-shore, ready to embark if the barbarians made their appearance. But the Huns having suddenly diverged in another direction, Paula brought back her followers to their beloved monasteries, and with a joyful heart once more took possession of them.

These events decided Fabiola to return to Rome. When all the troubles had ceased, Jerome wrote to her: "You would not remain with us; you feared new alarms. So be it. You are now tranquil; but, notwithstanding your tranquillity, I venture to say that Babylon will often make you sigh for the fields of Bethlehem. We are now at peace, and from this manger, which has been restored to us, we once more hear the wail of the infant Christ, the echoes of which I send you across the seas."

Unfortunately, however, the peace and quiet did not last long. After three years the dispute with the Bishop of Jerusalem was renewed with great violence. But the bishop, Theophilus, having only declared himself against Origenism, John was finally brought to reason by him, and Jerome and Rufinus were reconciled in his presence, before the altar in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Peace now reigned in the monasteries on what appeared to be a surer foundation.

But other sorrows came pouring in. News arrived from Rome of the death of Paulina, when she was but thirty, and Pammachius was left a widower and without posterity.

His loss in the daughter of Paula was great, for theirs was an admirable and holy union; for Paulina loved her husband and would have endeavored not only to make him happy, but virtuous. The grief of Pammachius was overwhelming. He had now but one wish on earth, which was to do something for the good of Paulina's soul.

It was an ancient custom in Rome at the obsequies of persons of distinction to give alms in honor of the dead, and to perpetuate their memory. This was called the funeraticium. On the day fixed for that of Paulina the streets of Rome were thronged. Troops of the poor, the lame, and the maimed wended their way to the church in answer to the invitation of Pammachius. The gilded door of the great basilica was open before them, and Pammachius himself was there distributing on all sides abundant alms in the name of Paulina.

Who can describe the grief of Paula when the news reached Bethlehem of the death of Paulina? She was ill for days afterward, and Eustochium feared for her life. Jerome wrote to Pammachius on the sorrowful event. "Who can see," cried he, "without grief, this beauteous rose gathered before her time and faded away? Our precious pearl, our emerald, is broken."

Paula's only consolation was in the admirable conduct of Pammachius. "This death was prolific," said St. Jerome, "for it gave a new life to Pammachius." He had always been a good Christian, he now became a heroic one. He thought of heaven, where his faith made him see his beloved Paulina; the example of Paula and Eustochium, and of his holy friend Jerome, all combined to detach him from the things of earth. He felt inspired with the noble resolution to consecrate to God the remaining years of his life. He assumed the dress of a monk and passed his time in charities and prayer. The jewels of Paulina were converted into money and given to the poor, and also her dower and the house of the noble senator was thrown open to all who were in want. Fabiola generously seconded him in founding hospitals, and their combined resources enabled them to accomplish great charities in Rome.

"Ordinary husbands," said St. Jerome, "show their affection and love by scattering roses and lilies and violets over a grave. Our Pammachius has covered the tomb of his departed wife with holy ashes, and with the perfume of charity. These are the aromatics with which he has embalmed Paulina." Such fruits were a great solace to Paula. When she heard that he had given away Paulina's dower to the poor, she exclaimed, "These are indeed the heirs that I would see my daughter have! Pammachius has not given me time even to express my wish; he has been beforehand with me!"

In the midst of her grief a ray of joy came from Rome, in the proposition from Toxotius and Laeta to send young Paula to her grandmother. They had determined that, in order to secure such holy training for their child, she should leave Rome and go to the East, where Paula and Eustochium would bring her up in the way of truth. Eustochium begged her of Laeta, and young Paula did eventually come to Bethlehem to join her aunt; but her venerable grandmother was no longer there to receive her.

The burden of years was now beginning to be felt by Paula. Sorrow and sadness pressed upon her, yet the ineffable beauty of her soul was greater than ever. St. Francis de Sales says of her that "she was like a beautiful and sweet violet, so sweet to see in the garden of the church." It is this exquisite and rare perfume which we must enjoy more in speaking of her in the years just before her death, when God seemed to touch her soul with a singularly soft and mellow light, like the evening of a fair day. She had been much disturbed by the renewal of the dissensions between St. Jerome and the Origenists. We have already said how she had grieved over the first encounter, seeing bishops against bishops, friends against friends, hermits against hermits. But the new struggles were still more painful to her: they had become personal, and, notwithstanding the reconciliation with Rufinus, he had attacked St. Jerome's character and writings, and the latter was obliged to defend himself. Paula had also witnessed another painful sight. After the council condemning Origen, the monks accused of sharing his erroneous opinions were driven away from the desert, and among them were many whom Paula had formerly known and venerated, and who were now homeless wanderers. The severity of the Patriarch of Alexandria against them grieved her deeply; and, the most bitter of all, her tears were those she shed for the throes of the church and for the evil passions of men. New sorrows came upon her also. She heard of the death of Fabiola, her old and dear friend. Then came the death of St. Epiphanius, who had been to Paula like a beloved father.

Toxotius, her only son, was now taken away. All her children but Eustochium were dead. What was left for Paula but suffering? Physical infirmities accumulated upon her the result of her austerities. Of these she would merely say, "When I am weak, then it is that I am strong;" and again, "We must resign ourselves to carrying our treasure in brittle vases, until the day comes when this miserable body shall be robed in immortality." She also loved to repeat these words: "If the sufferings of Christ abound in us, his consolations abound also. Sharers of his bodily agony, we will also be partakers of his glory."

The things of earth could no longer touch her, for she had seen how passing they are and knew that they could not last. The longing for the heavenly country grew in proportion. She would say with the patriarchs of the desert, "We are but travellers on the earth." And when her sufferings increased, she murmured gently, "Oh! who will give me the wings of a dove, that I may fly to everlasting rest?"

She no longer belonged to the earth, she was almost in heaven. Her soul had reached such extraordinary perfection that she seemed already to see the glory and to hear the harmonies of heaven. Peace and joy were suffused throughout her being, rising above her sufferings. Her love of God grew greater, and death seemed to her not a separation from those she loved on earth, but an indissoluble union with God, in whom all joys are found again. "Who," says St. Jerome, "can tell without tears how Paula died?" He himself wrote immortal pages on the subject, which have consoled many a dying soul since.

When Sainte Chantal was on her death-bed, she asked to have read to her once more St. Jerome's account of the death of Paula, to which she listened with wonderful attention, repeating several times these words: "What are we? Nothing but atoms alongside of these grand nuns."

It was in the year A.D. 403 that Paula fell ill. When it became known that her life was in imminent danger, the whole monastery was in consternation.

Eustochium could not be comforted; she who had never quit her mother from childhood could not bear the thought of separation. Her love for her mother, which had always been so touching, shone now in all the ardor and strength of her nature. She would yield her place by the bedside to no one by day or by night. Every remedy was administered by her hands, and she would throw herself on her knees by the bed, and implore God to suffer them to die together and be laid in one tomb. But these tears and these prayers could not postpone the hour marked by God for the end. Her time had expired; Paula had suffered enough and wept enough. She should now see joy, and put on the robes of glory. It became evident that her strength was failing, and that she had but a few days left to live. She bore her sufferings with admirable patience and heavenly serenity. She was grateful for the care bestowed on her by Eustochium and the devoted daughters of the house, but her whole mind was given up to the thought of opening Paradise. Her lips were heard to murmur her favorite verses from Scripture.

The Bishop of Jerusalem and all the bishops of Palestine, together with a great number of religious, flocked to her bedside to witness this saintly death. The monastery was filled with them. But Paula, absorbed in God, saw them not, heard them not. Several asked her questions, but she did not answer. Jerome then approached and wished to know if she were troubled and why she did not speak. She answered in Greek, "Oh! no; I have neither trouble nor regret; I feel, on the contrary, great inward peace."

After these words she spoke no more, but her fingers ceased not to make the sign of the cross. At last, however, she opened her eyes with joy, as if she saw a celestial vision, and as if hearing the divine voice of the canticle, "Rise up, come to me, O my dove, my beloved, for winter is past and the rain has disappeared." She spoke as if in answer, for she continued, in low but joyful tones, the words of the sacred song: "Flowers have appeared on the earth, the time for gathering them has arrived." Then she added, "I think I see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." With these words on her lips Paula expired. She had lived to the age of fifty-six years eight months and twenty-one days; of which time, twenty-five years had been passed since her widowhood in religious life.

Her obsequies were a marvel. Before consigning her body to the tomb, it was carried to the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, which she loved and where she lay for three days with uncovered face, for the visitation and veneration of the faithful. Crowds flocked from all parts to do her honor, and bishops sought to take part in the funeral ceremonies and to show respect to the lamented deceased. Among the hermits of the desert, it was almost esteemed a sacrilege to stay away. John of Jerusalem himself officiated. But the most touching part of the spectacle was the long array of the poor, following in the procession, and weeping for their mother. Death had not altered the noble countenance of Paula; she was only pale, and looked as if sleeping. The people could not tear themselves away from this last view of her beloved features. She was finally interred under this same church, in a grotto, where her tomb may still be seen up to the present time. During the week following her burial, the crowd continued to linger about her tomb, singing psalms in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin or in Syriac.

All this time, the sorrow of Eustochium had been terrible to behold. Her very being was rent in twain. She could not be torn away from her mother's body up to the last, but would remain by her, tenderly kissing her eyes, throwing her arms around her, and beseeching to be buried in the tomb with her. This continued until the grave shut out the form of Paula from her for ever.

Jerome tried to console her, though himself bowed down by grief. Of all the souls he had directed, none were so lofty nor so intimately connected with his own as that of Paula. So crushed was he by this loss, that it was long before the world again heard his mighty voice.

He found some solace in composing two epitaphs in her honor, to be engraved, one at the entrance of the grotto where the grave lay, the other on the grave itself. The following is the translation of the inscription on the sepulchre of Paula:

"The daughter of the Scipios, of the Gracchi, the illustrious blood of Agamemnon, rests in this place. She bore the name of Paula. She was the mother of Eustochium. First in the senate of Roman matrons, she preferred the poverty of Christ and the humble fields of Bethlehem, to all the splendor of Rome."

In this epitaph, Paula's whole history is told. The other epitaph of St. Jerome, engraved on the entrance of the grotto, reproduces, in other terms, the same record of virtue, and, what is more, shows its sublime origin. It is in the following words:

"Seest thou that grotto cut in the rock? It is the tomb of Paula, now an inhabitant of the heavenly kingdom. She gave up her brother, her relations, Rome, her country, her wealth, her children, for the grotto of Bethlehem, where she is buried. It was there, O Christ! that your cradle was. It was there that the Magi came to make you their mystical offerings, O man God!"

Eustochium desired St. Jerome, besides these two epitaphs, to write a funeral eulogium on her mother. With a hand trembling with age and emotion, he performed this pious duty. We should here mention that most of the details we have endeavored to give in this short narrative, are taken from what is, perhaps, considered the most eloquent and touching of all his writings. At the conclusion, he thus apostrophizes her:

"Farewell, O Paula! Sustain, by your prayers, the declining years of him who so revered you. United now by faith and good works with Christ, you will be more powerful above than you were here below. I have engraved your praise, O Paula! on the rock of your sepulchre, and to it I add these pages; for I wish to raise to you a monument more lasting than adamant, that all may learn that your memory was honored in Bethlehem, where your ashes repose."

Paula's good works died not with her. Her monasteries were continued piously and courageously by Eustochium, the worthy daughter of such a mother. With time, heresies arose to disturb the atmosphere anew; and the controversy of Pelagius aroused the latent powers of Jerome, and for some time absorbed him, to the detriment of his studies. But at the prayer of Eustochium, and in memory of Paula, he finally resumed his labors, and in the year 403 concluded his great work in the translation of the Bible, which is called the Vulgate, and was adopted by the church in the last universal council.

The Pelagians having set fire to the monasteries of Bethlehem, all the buildings erected by the pious care of Paula were burned to the ground. This act was odious to the whole world. It was admirable to see the serenity of Eustochium under this trial. She went to work, and, using for that purpose the noble dower brought to her by her niece Paula, who had come to her at Bethlehem, the monasteries were soon built up again, and filled with their former inhabitants. About this time, Alaric, King of the Huns, overran Rome with his barbarian hordes, and numberless Christian refugees from them came to the East in search of an asylum. Pammachius and Marcella were dead, but many of their friends were numbered among the exiles. Eustochium and Jerome received all who came with wide-open doors, and the hospitality of Paula still lived in her successors.

Eustochium survived her mother only sixteen years. She expired without a struggle, like one falling asleep. No further details are given of her last moments. This was on the 28th day of September, A.D. 418. Her remains were laid by those of her mother, according to her wish. St. Jerome did not long survive her. Her death was his last great sorrow; and he died in the following year. He was too old now to resist the final dispersion of what he had called his domestic church. Marcella, Asella, Paula, Fabiola, Pammachius, Eustochium, had all ceased to live. Rome itself was gone, for, to a Roman heart like that of Jerome's, her captivity was her death.

He fell into a state of settled melancholy, his voice having become so weak and feeble that it was with difficulty he could be heard at all. It was soon impossible for him to be raised from his miserable couch, but by means of a cord suspended from the roof of his grotto; and in this position he would recite his prayers, or give his instructions to the monks for the management of the monastery. He died at the age of seventy-two years, after living thirty-four years at Bethlehem. His eyes rested, when he was dying, on young Paula, who was beside him. She who had been his spiritual child from her cradle, now performed the last sad offices for him. We have no details of his obsequies. According to his request, she placed his remains in the grotto not far from the venerable Paula, her grandmother, and Eustochium. United in life, they were so also in death. Jerome's principal disciple, Eusebius of Cremona, now assumed the head of his convents, while young Paula continued to rule those of her grandmother's. We know nothing more. With the correspondence of Jerome died all traces of these communities, and night fell upon the East.

Glimpses Of Tuscany.

II.
The Boboli Gardens.

The high wall of our raised garden binds on the southern entrance to the Boboli: our white spirae droops down into it like a willow, so large and in such perfect bloom that strangers stop to sketch it as they pass. The good grand duke has gone since I last was here; the Sardinian bayonet is gleaming exactly where the Austrian sentinel stood. The Boboli has changed masters—not for the first time—and accepts the situation with the serenity of a veteran.

It is a bright Sunday morning. There is still time for a walk there before the Military Mass at Santo Spirito. Twelve years have not disturbed the placid sameness of this creature of the hill-side: the laurels are clipped just as evenly, the old busts and statues look at you, or at each other, just as archly or just as stolidly. It is all thoroughly man-made—intensely artificial. Every impulse of nature has been stifled in tree and shrub, until they no more dare to lean out of line than soldiers on parade. The very crocuses steal timidly through the grass, as if they were afraid of doing wrong.

"Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother;
One half the garden represents the other."

It looks human, every inch; the Lord is completely banished; his Spirit could not possibly walk in such a garden. And yet this creature of man seems clothed with imperishable bloom: this death of all nature seems able to outlive all other life. You cannot despise it, for it possesses the semblance of indestructibility— unchangefulness in the midst of change. In the forests, dissolution and reproduction are palpably waging their unending warfare; even on the eternal Apennines, the snow comes and goes, the lights and shadows of the clouds are endlessly shifting. But in this miniature world monotony counterfeits the terrible fixity and relentlessness of fate. Nature is deprived of all free-will, and moves obedient to a fixed design.

It is difficult to say how far civilization, apart from religion, may go with advantage in remodelling the natural man. It is equally difficult to say how far art may safely encroach upon nature in reconstructing a landscape. Some of the grand elemental presentations disdain our interference. We have no control over the clouds, or the curves of the ocean, or the nocturnal radiance of the skies. But the surface of the earth is an unfinished sketch, which the Creator has left us to humanize, in some small degree, after our fancy. We do not make even the smallest impression upon its planetary aspect; but, after centuries of toil, we succeed in partially changing its more immediate expression. We take the groundwork ready made, accept the laws as we find them, and then, inspired by the supreme longing after unrevealed beauty, which, in some shape or other, haunts every human soul, proceed to establish a little paradise of our own.

But above and beyond that last temporal Eden, there is still another—the one beyond the grave. I, who am an immortal spirit capable of sharing the celestial joy of angels, predestined for the beatific vision; I, whose hereafter should be passed amid perpetual light, and peace, and beauty; may I not have imaginings of better forms, of sweeter faces, of fairer prospects, of deeper skies, and even of diviner stars than those revealed to the senses? Did Raphael ever see a face that equalled hers of the San Sisto? Was there ever in the flesh a form to rival the Apollo of the Vatican? Is there any pattern in nature for Giotto's Campanile? Is there any voice in the woods or seas to suggest the melodies of Kreutzer or the harmonies of Beethoven? And may we not, then, poetize our landscapes too, and throw into the face of nature the expression of a human soul? But here is precisely the difficulty: the landscape has a soul of its own, which must not be murdered, even to make way for ours. The Grand Master has been at work before us; his works have wandered, of their own sweet will, into shapes and combinations that exhibit the grace beyond the reach of art. The mountains, the streams. the valleys, are full of these sweet surprises. The true artist can do little more than reproduce them, squared and framed, for parlor contemplation: the true gardener can do little more than display them to the best advantage.

It is more than likely, though, that, when the Boboli Gardens were laid out by the Medici, the artists employed had only to deal with unornamented slopes of olive orchards and arable land. The landscape was less to be remodelled than created. The surface under treatment was artistically as blank as uncolored canvas— as meaningless as quarried marble. With this difference, however: that while the groundwork of the painter fades and wrinkles, while marble stains and shatters, while even the sculptured arches of great cathedrals crumble into dust, the living canvas on which the landscape gardener works is not only imperishable, but so charged with vitality that it gains instead of losing by duration; or, should a touch of decay at last appear, it is but in transition to new phases of beauty. One would think that, where human fancy is free to conceive a garden of delight, and human means sufficient to ransack the ages and spoil the climes for its embellishment, the result could not escape being a public and paramount attraction. I take this Boboli Garden as a sample of most public gardens or parks. Are they popularly, or even selectly, attractive? Are they ever thronged, except at stated hours, when people chiefly congregate to exhibit themselves and criticise each other? Was an artist, by any miracle, ever caught there more than once, save in the capacity of casual saunterer? Are they not startlingly unfrequented, in spite of their superb richness and beauty? However conducive these civic Edens to municipal health, have not the park police an almost exclusive monopoly of the fresh air and gravel? Do these magnets draw by dint of their intrinsic beauty? It may safely be questioned. And may not this failure be attributed to our vague, unpronounced repugnance to having nature out of harmony with itself and ourselves? Notwithstanding all the gilt and carmine of the new emblazonry, we keep asking the gay palimpsest to restore the lost features of our first friend.

The curse that fell on Adam also visited the earth from which he was taken. The heart of fallen man is full of yearning; the face of nature is full of sympathetic sadness; her voice is nearer a sigh than a song. More than half the year is clouded, more than half the hours belong to night, and over more than half the world goes the wail of the unresting seas. The vast distances are everywhere softened or shaded into pensiveness; the very sunshine turns to blue and purple on the hills; it is only the small near which presumes to be glad with the flash of a rivulet, the song of birds, or the glance of flowers. And, in these minor poems too, there is apt to lurk some sly suggestion of the unattained. Even where the universe is transfigured by the coming morn, and the world thrills with the joyous cry of reawakened life, the momentary exultation, the piercing delight of existence, are soon sobered by toil, or care, or thought; and, bright as the coming day may prove, the impression left on human hearts is that of promise unfulfilled. The poorest part of sunrise is the sun itself; the horns on the Rigi are silent as soon as the orb is fairly up.

It may not be overbold to affirm that some of these grander parks, such as the Bois de Boulogne, bear no mean resemblance to the first paradise itself. But our lot is changed since then; the primitive tradition of Deity incarnate has been fulfilled. Eden could no longer content us; we would not care to pass those Cherubim with the flaming sword, even if we dared. Between us and any possible paradise lies the grave. It is worse than mockery to expect the sorely laden Christian heart to find more than casual enjoyment in arbitrary walks, and endless beds of roses, and artificial fountains, and manufactured grottoes. Sorrow, passion, death, were encountered by God in descending to man; sorrow, passion, death, must be encountered by man in ascending to God. Spiritual felicity is less to be extracted from violets and roses than from sackcloth and ashes. Temporal happiness is not to be compassed by meandering through shaded avenues and even lawns, but by the sweat of the brow and the work of the hands; and in our respites from toil we like the wild, suggestive irregularities of nature better than a too glaring array of brightnesses with which we are seldom in complete accord. The post-Adamic garden needs depth and gloom and mystery as well as sunshine and flowers.

I do not mean to say that the Boboli is wholly glad; much of it is sad or saddening enough. That long, grim avenue of cypress would suit the valley of the shadow of death. Arnolfo's dark, mighty wall goes striding down the hill-side like a phantom. The Boboli was only meant to be wholly glad. Though probably not designed by a Greek, it is nevertheless Grecian, or rather Athenian; for, in art, Athens is Greece. By an exceptional felicity and refinement of mental, moral, and physical organization, the Athenian realized in himself the most perfect development of natural civilization. The dark, religious mysteries which tinge and sadden Hindu, Egyptian, and most Gentile life had little hold upon the Greek. Athens, in her prime, succeeded in escaping the pressure and responsibility of the hereafter. She aimed at making time a success independent of eternity. The real heaven of the Athenian and his disciples, in both classic peninsulas, was this world, not the next. Eternity was but the ghost of time, a vague prolongation of the present for better or worse in Elysium or Hades, the shadow projected by a vast material world as it moved through endless space. The poets of Greece dictated her popular theology; her sculptors carried beauty to the very borders of the beatitude, giving such glory to form that the inspired likeness is mistaken for the divine original. It is impossible to tell where the hero ends and the god begins. We have the deification of man in marble or fable, instead of the humanization of God in the flesh; or, in other words, the identity of religion and art. This pleasant way of being one with God, this graceful fulfilment of destiny, imparted a complacency to Athenian life which we cannot imitate.

"In every dark and awful place,
Rude hill and haunted wood.
This beautiful, bright people left
A name of omen good.

"Unlike the children of romance,
From out whose spirit deep
The touch of gloom hath passed on glen.
And mountain, lake, and steep;
On Devil's Bridge and Raven's Tower,
And love-lorn Maiden's Leap."

Grecian life, in its highest aspect, was an attempt to reproduce the perfections of a lost Eden; Christian life, in its highest aspect, is purification, self-denial, self-immolation, for a paradise which can never be reached in this world, and only in the next after life-long fear and trembling. And although we strive more or less successfully to substitute the joys of the spirit for those of the flesh, yet "Even we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body." (St. Paul. [Footnote 208]) After the knowledge of good and evil, our paradise must have no walls. The broad expanse of which each one of us may chance to be the centre, bounded by the horizon and vaulted by the sky—the whole visible landscape, with its fitful light and shade, its changing blight and bloom, its alternating sigh and song, whether subdued into use or wild as on the morning of the first Sabbath—this whole visible universe is the only garden in harmony with the vast aspiration, the ceaseless yearning of Christian life. Our opened eyes would weary of the walled Eden, as Rasselas wearied of the Happy Valley.

[Footnote 208: For the suggestion of this text of St. Paul the writer is indebted to a notice in the Freeman's Journal of Father Ryan's beautiful lines, "Why does your poetry sound like a sigh."]

It is a pure and paramount joy to grapple with the rugged earth and bend it to your will; a joy to pierce the forest to your liking and smooth a bare expanse into velvet lawn: of mortal joys perhaps the purest and most enduring. But when all is done?—

Take your stand behind the Pitti Palace almost anywhere high up the hill, on the observatory itself, if you choose. All the wide valley of the Arno, with its circumference of cultured hills and woodless mountains, is before you. For thousands of years industrious generations have been at work on that fair panorama. Yellow villas are dotting all the heights; olive-trees are wrapping all the slopes in pale monotony; the vines are trailing everywhere in endless procession over mutilated mulberries; the long gray walls are solemnly parcelling out the small Tuscan farms. All Florence is beneath you, with its domes and towers and spires, its streets and bridges, its memories and suggestions. The atmosphere is so transparent, the cultivation so perfect, that the area described by half the radius of vision seems to enclose only a vast kitchen-garden. But further on, the mist and haze are settling; the enchantment of distance is falling; Vallambrosa, gleaming on its mountain's breast, turns into some mysterious opal; the records traced by man through all those centuries are gradually erased by the quiet alchemy of nature, and the same eternal story reappears as vividly as if the superscription were but the shadow of a dream.

Turn to the Boboli at your feet. Do you wonder it is a failure—that Florence never goes there? They love their own little gardens dearly and the flowers in their windows; for these are but sweet thefts from nature to embellish home. But for these attempts to compress universal beauty into a given space, for this overprizing, overadorning of the near, only to be lost, or merged, or overlooked in the glory of the far, the Christian heart can have but little relish.

The bells of Santo Spirito are ringing; and I wonder, on my way there, if that cold white hand of Athens will ever quite relax its hold on Christian life.

Translated From Le Correspondant.
Anecdotical Memoirs By A Former Page
Of The Emperor Nicholas.

One day, some months after my admission among the pages, as the classes were being dismissed, I heard a great noise. People were running to and fro, agitated and hurried; officers of the service, pages of the bedroom, inspectors, all seemed to be in a state of extraordinary excitement.

"Gentlemen, look out! look out! the emperor!" cried in an authoritative tone the head of our company, while his deep, sonorous voice reechoed throughout the dormitory, where, according to custom, we were all assembled before dinner.

At this name I was deeply moved. My mother and my companions had often, very often spoken to me of the emperor in recitals where legend mingled with reality, but I had not yet seen him face to face. The officer on duty arranged us in military order, each one standing near his own bed, and so we waited for him.

Soon the captain of the guard announced that the czar was coming up the great stairway. The dormitory, ordinarily so noisy, became perfectly still. There was a moment of solemn silence, religious in its perfect stillness. We hardly dared to breathe. The officer, with his helmet on, placed himself at the threshold. Suddenly, in the opening of the large doorway, appeared a man of tall stature, in the uniform of a general and in the midst of a cortége of superior officers. His countenance was severe, his whole exterior imposing. This was Nicholas I.

Since then I have seen, and closely, most of the sovereigns of Europe, and more than once have been admitted to the honor of direct conversation with them; but never have I beheld a figure more royal or more profoundly imprinted with supreme majesty; never have I since experienced the icy impression that this view of the czar produced upon me.

He walked straightforward in lordly style, his leaden eyes coldly fixed on those of each person to whom in turn he addressed himself, and gazing deeply into each face with a penetration that seemed to mark the very secrets of the soul. His step impressed you; his aspect intimidated; and his attitudes, so truly sovereign, added to a physiognomy so haughty, reflected the guiding sentiment of his life, his utter contempt for mankind, and his mystical faith in his own all-powerfulness. Of colossal height and admirably beautiful in face, his hard and penetrating eye subjugated you at once. Simply clad, even in peasant attire, he would have been recognized by his look and his imperial carriage, and surrounded even by twenty generals in full uniform, the cry would have resounded, "The emperor! it is he!"

He made the tour of the room, and, after speaking to several pages, came at last to where I stood. As he neared my bed, the director approached him and said:

"Sire, this is D——."

"Ah!" bowed the emperor, and turning toward me:

"How is your mother?"

"Well, sire."

"She is a good friend of mine. Are you satisfied with your present position?"

"Yes, sire."

"How long since he entered among the pages?" asked the czar of the director.

"About two months since, sire."

"And conducts himself well?"

"Very well."

"Bravo!"

Until now the conversation had been in French.

"And," resumed the emperor, but this time speaking Russian, "have you learned Russian?"

"Not yet, sire," I replied in French.

"What! here two months, and not yet a word! Why, that is outrageous. Can't you even say no in Russian?"

"I ask pardon, your majesty; I do speak Russian with my comrades."

"Well, why then, stupid, if you can speak it with your comrades, do you answer me in French when I address you in Russian?"

"Because, if I express myself incorrectly to a simple page, I am not annoyed, whereas, with your majesty—"

"Very well, that will do."

I had heard he wished nothing badly done in his presence, and I knew too little Russian to dare venture it before his majesty.

"Did you hear that?" said the emperor; and turning toward General Philosophoff, "Here is one who will never be a fool," added he, and passed on.

Nicholas I., Paulowitch, the third son of the Emperor Paul III., had never dreamed of a crown. He believed himself destined for the pompous and useless life of a grand duke. Between him and the empire were two older brothers, both young and both intelligent.

However, since his earliest youth his character had shown itself self-willed, domineering, and tyrannical, in a manner the presage of his reign and harbinger of his politics. There has been discovered among the books used in his education while he was quite a child, a volume of the History of Russia, by Karamsin, and on the margin of which are written in his own hand these remarkable words, "The Czar Ivan IV., the Terrible, was a severe but a just man, as one ought to be to govern a nation."

Such sentiments loudly expressed by Nicholas could not fail to alarm a people and court who still remembered the reign of his father, Paul I., only dead twenty-three years. The reign of this crowned fool had, notwithstanding its short duration, tired out even Russia itself—Russia, too, already so corrupted by the habit of despotism; and a revolution in the palace had at last put an end to the follies of this barbarian, this second Heliogabalus.

During the reign of Alexander I., the court and town spoke freely of the despot Paul. Nicholas, who neither could nor dared reinstate the memory of his father, and who considered it impolitic to permit a people to express themselves irreverently of a czar, forbade throughout his whole empire even the mention of a name so abhorred. The legend of his death he especially interdicted, and so long as the reign of Nicholas lasted, the memory of Paul I. remained in silence and obscurity.

While his brother Alexander I. governed the empire, Nicholas, who, as we have said, believing it impossible he should ever reign, kept himself in comparative obscurity, concentrated all his attention on the troops, each day passing them in review, and occupied himself only with the lot of the soldier and the amelioration of his condition. The marriage of the Grand Duke Constantine with the Princess of Lowicz brought him unexpectedly nearer the throne. At the death of the Emperor Alexander, and notwithstanding the unequal marriage of his brother, he was still uncertain of his approaching advancement. But when he learned, first by the will of Alexander, then by the letter of Constantine intrusted to the Senate, and finally from Constantine himself, his renunciation of the empire, he accepted the crown, and from the day he did so, faithful to his character, he understood how to reign fully and absolutely.

Firmly convinced that he represented celestial power on earth, sincerely persuaded that to his own people he was the mandatary of God, and held within himself divine prerogatives, he watched with an overshadowing jealousy the sacred deposit with which he believed himself charged, and any attempt against his authority appeared to him a sacrilege and proved him inexorable. The conviction that he never pardoned even the simple appearance of such a crime isolated him in the midst of his court and people, enveloped him in an atmosphere of gloom and terror, and placed him at a distance that added to his prestige and the respectful fear he inspired.

It is said that one evening, about two years after his death, one of his aides-de-camp, (in the midst of an animated conversation,) recognizing the portrait of the emperor in the drawing-room, suddenly left his place, and quickly turned its face to the wall. "During the life of the czar, I had such a terror of him," said he, "that I fear the copy, with its terrible eyes fixed upon me, may disconcert and embarrass me as greatly as did the model."

This very intentness of look was in truth the power of intimidation which the emperor possessed. Intending to win a confidence from any one or force a confession, he fastened on his victim his cold and immovable eyes. The unfortunate was literally fascinated. He knew that a word or a gesture from the autocrat sufficed to annihilate him, and the least contraction of his brow froze the blood in his veins. Terror is the necessary auxiliary of every despotism, democratic or aristocratic, monarchical or republican.

Yet these jealous instincts, and this implacable firmness in punishment, were not solely due to the character of the Emperor Nicholas, but also to the sad experiences which signalized the commencement of his reign. Conspiracies against the new czar, revolts occasioned by the appearance of cholera, indeed all sorts of disorders, Nicholas had to suppress on his accession to the throne. From the very first he learned these bloody retaliations, and never pardoned.

The first conspirators of his reign, Pestel, Mouravieff-Apostol, and the poet Relieff, were condemned to be hung. The emperor signed the decree after the Russian formula, "Byt po siemau" (So be it.) They were then conducted to the place of execution. Relieff, a poet of the highest order, was the first one led to the scaffold. Just at the moment when the executioner, having passed the slip-knot, over his head, had raised him on his shoulders to launch him into eternity, the too weak cord broke, and he fell forward bruised and bleeding.

"They know not how to do anything in Russia," said he, raising himself without even turning pale, "not even to twist a rope."

As accidents of this kind—besides being very rare, were always considered occasions of pardon, they sent, therefore, to the Winter Palace to know the will of the emperor.

"Ah! the cord has broken?" said Nicholas.

"Yes, sire."

"Then he was almost dead? What impression has such close contact with eternity produced on the mind of the rebel?"

"He is a brave man, sire."

The czar frowned.

"What did he say?" asked he severely.

"Sire, he said, 'They know not how even to twist a rope in Russia.'"

"Well," replied Nicholas, "let them prove to him the contrary." And he went out.

A wealthy Polish lord, the Prince Roman Sanguszko, had been condemned, as a conspirator, to serve the rest of his life as a simple soldier, and to immediately join a regiment fighting in Caucasia. On the margin of the sentence, the emperor wrote in his own hand, "On foot!"

Such severity was in him a system. He sincerely believed in it as a necessity, and a part of the sanctity of absolute power. In Russia, especially, his knowledge of the character of his people fortified him in his belief, and he let no opportunity escape to declare his despotism.

Of all the heterogeneous elements that compose the immense empire of Russia, there is not one that ever seems likely to develop in the slightest degree the idea of liberalism; not a single nationality in which servilism is not innate, and to which the people themselves are not as much attached as the nations of the East to liberty. Hence it is that among the Russians, properly so-called, and who constitute the main portion of the population, we find the nobility infected with an inveterate sentiment of servile obsequiousness, and the people predisposed by temperament, and moulded by past experience, to the most abject submission. They all have the same character as the great princes of Kieff, who, when under the yoke of the Tartars, went to receive the investiture of the Khan of the Horde d'Or; and who, after having held his stirrup and offered him a glass of koumys, [Footnote 209] were obliged to lick from the neck of his horse the milk that dropped from his moustaches. Do we need greater evidence of the servility of the Russian people than the reign of the crowned tiger, Ivan IV. the Terrible, a despot without parallel in history, whose subjects, more patient than the Romans under Caligula and Nero, not only were contented to bear with his follies and crimes, but actually supplicated him to resume the throne, after his voluntary abdication through disgust of others and himself? The reign, too, of Peter the Great, whose savage grandeur could not absolve him from cruelty, and even the possibility in the nineteenth century of such a despot as Nicholas I., what greater proofs do we require?

[Footnote 209: Camel's milk fermented.]

As to the half-savage nations of the northern limits of Russia and Siberia, with populations perhaps only yesterday awakened to anything like social life, their need is still, as with children, the master, and the ferule.

It is easy to understand, then, how a man armed like Nicholas with an iron will and immense authority, and comprehending perfectly the character of his people, should have conceived this superhuman idea of his own power. Never thwarted by the least resistance, only now and then by an occasional murmuring, we can need no better explanation of his apparently exaggerated despotism, of his inveterate faith in the sanctity of his domination, his conviction that in himself centred his whole empire, and the faculty, in fine, which he possessed in so great a degree, of entirely ignoring mankind.

One day, a short time before the Crimean war, at a grand military review at Krasnoe-Selo, the emperor, on horseback, presented his troops to the empress seated in her carriage. Suddenly appeared on the drill ground a cariole drawn by one horse, and out of which stepped a feld jaguer, (courier of the palace,) charged with two autographic letters from the King of Prussia to the emperor and empress. As the empress was the more easily approached, he handed her the first letter, and ran toward the emperor to present the second. But some steps from him he pauses, turns pale, and bursts into tears. The letter is lost.

Trembling from head to foot, he retraces his steps to try and find it, but the soldiers, the aides-de-camp, the horses, have already trodden it in the dust, and the precious envelope cannot be found.

"What ails that animal?" asked the emperor of one of his aides-de-camp.

"I do not know, sire."

"Well, go and ask him, and bring me his reply."

The aide-de-camp spurred his horse, and from the lips of the poor feld jaguer he learned that an autograph letter from the King of Prussia to the Emperor of Russia had been lost. He brought the czar the information.

The face of Nicholas clouded instantly; his expression was gloomy and severe.

"Take charge of this man yourself and without allowing him to communicate with any one, conduct him immediately to Siberia. Let him not be harshly treated, but let him never again appear in Europe."

The aide-de-camp, as well as the unhappy feld jaguer, were both to set out, without even changing their boots, for this journey of 2000 leagues. The aide-de-camp returned eight months afterward, and was recompensed by promotion from the emperor, but the poor courier was doubtless dying or dead in the neighborhood of Tobolsk, such faults as his having escaped an amnesty.

Such instances (I witnessed the one I am about to relate) were not rare in the life of Nicholas. One morning in the spring, when a freshet of the Neva had rendered its crossing extremely perilous, the emperor, on looking from the window of his Winter Palace, saw a large crowd watching, in evident stupefaction, a man directing himself, by leaps from one piece of ice to another, toward the opposite shore.

He called his attendant aide-de-camp.

"Look at that fool," said he. "What courage! Run and see what motive he has for so exposing his life."

The aide-de-camp learned the particulars and returned.

"Sire, he is a peasant who has bet he would cross the Neva for twenty-five roubles, and is trying to gain the reward."

"Give him twenty-fire lashes," replied Nicholas; "a man who risks his life in this miserable way would be capable of anything for money."

To a desperate caprice of the same kind is due the construction of the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, called the Nicholas railroad. The emperor had in his court a certain general, Kleinmichel, a disagreeable person, exceedingly unpopular, and of equivocal fidelity, but who pleased by his reticence and promptness in executing orders. When the road was decided upon by a counsel of ministers, and its erection considered urgent, a map of Russia was brought to the czar, who was asked to look over the course designated by the different engineers and give his preference. Nicholas, without saying a word, took the map, marked a straight line from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and said to the stupefied engineers:

"This is the line of the railroad."

"But," they all cried, "impossible. Your majesty will find no one to undertake such a work. It would be to hide treasures in a desert."

"No one undertake it when I command it to be done!" said Nicholas. "We shall see."

And signalling Kleinmichel from a corner:

"Kleinmichel," said he, "you see this line?"

"Yes, sire."

"This is a new railroad I propose constructing in my empire."

"Sire, it is magnificent!"

"You think so? Will you charge yourself, then, with the execution of my orders?"

"With the greatest pleasure, sire, if your majesty orders it. But the funds, the funds?"

"Don't be troubled about them. Ask for all the money you want."

And turning to the engineers:

"You see," said Nicholas to them, "I can get along without you. I will build my own railroad."

And the construction of this road lasted ten years. It did not deviate an inch from the line marked out by the imperial finger; and leaving on one side, at about a distance of ten leagues, the villages of Novgorod, Twer, and a host of others equally rich and important, it traversed, in the midst of marshes and woods, nothing but immense solitudes; 706 kilometres of iron rail cost Russia 400,000,000 francs—a little more than half a million a kilometre—of which the devoted Kleinmichel, but that as a matter of course, took a good share. Nicholas, however, was right in saying nothing could resist him.

Some weeks after the inauguration of this railroad an ambassador arrived at St. Petersburg. According to custom and to pay him attention, everything was shown him in detail, all the objects of interest in the city. He expressed no surprise or admiration; his oriental gravity was proof against either.

"What could we show him that would astonish him?" asked the emperor of Menschikoff.

"Show him the accounts of Kleinmichel for the Nicholas railroad," replied the prince, laughing.

A few days later, General Kleinmichel, in presence of the emperor, was discussing with Menschikoff some question upon which they could not agree. The general proposed to the prince a wager.

"With pleasure," replied the latter, "and this shall be the stake, if your excellence permits it. He who loses shall be obliged—at the expense of the winner—to go to Moscow and return by the railroad your excellence has just finished."

"What joke is this?" asked the emperor.

"A very simple one, sire. The road is so constructed that one is very sure to break his neck on it; so, you see, we are playing for our lives."

The emperor laughed heartily at the joke, but Kleinmichel took care not to accept the bet.

These two instances prove that Nicholas knew how, now and then, to listen to a truth well said. He was too certain that none of his subjects dared fail him in the respect he required, so he could afford to listen to those who were bold and witty enough to approach him with the truth. Menschikoff, the same who commanded at Sebastopol, was one of these; better than any other, he always maintained before the czar his frank speech, and Nicholas, little accustomed to such frankness, loved him dearly, and frequently amused himself with his sallies.

General Kleinmichel was the aversion of Menschikoff. One day the latter entered the cabinet of Nicholas at the moment when the emperor was playing with one of his grand-children, the Grand Duke Michel, still quite an infant.

Astraddle on the shoulders of his grandfather, the little prince made the czar serve for his horse.

"See," cried Nicholas gayly, "see how this little imp treats me. I am growing thin under it. The little monkey is so heavy, I shall fall with fatigue."

"Zounds!" quickly replied Menschikoff, "little Michel (in German Klein-michel) ought not to be a very light load, if he carries about him all he has stolen."

Notwithstanding his jokes, which spared no one, Menschikoff delighted Nicholas, who could readily enough withdraw him from the chief command at Sebastopol, but would not deprive him of his friendship. This was of more ancient date, and founded on the two good qualities of courage and sincerity. Sometimes, but rarely, others approached the emperor as familiarly. The celebrated poet, Pouchkine, for example, dared to express himself in his presence with a frankness which, even in occidental Europe, and in a constitutional state, would pass for audacity.

In the palace of the Hermitage, where they were walking together, the emperor had led the poet into a gallery of pictures that contained the portraits of all the Romanoffs, from Michel Fedorovitch to the last reigning sovereign, and had ordered him to improvise some verses on each.

Pouchkine obeyed; but coming to the portrait of Nicholas, he was silent.

"Well, Pouchkine," said the emperor, "what have you to say of me?"

"Sire!"

"Some flattery, of course? I don't wish to hear it; so tell the truth."

"Your majesty permits me?"

"I order you. Believe in my imperial word, you shall not suffer."

"So be it, sire."

And he wrote the famous distich:

"Des pieds à la tête la toile est admirable;
De la tête aux pieds le tzar est détestable."
[Footnote 210]

[Footnote 210:
"From feet to head the picture is admirable:
From head to feet the czar is detestable."]

The emperor made no reply, but he asked Pouchkine for no more verses.

Notwithstanding his despotism, and the arbitrary acts that signalized his reign; notwithstanding the innumerable banishments into Siberia and Caucasia, it is seen the emperor could sometimes bear to hear the truth. The instinct of justice was born in him; despotism had smothered it, unfortunately, but his better nature frequently triumphed. Often the hereditary grand duke had, in this respect, to submit to severe reprimands. One day, in 1832, a year after the revolt of the Poles, whom Nicholas had handled with implacable rigor, the grand duke, in the presence of his father, had called them accursed. Rebuking publicly his son:

"Imperial Highness," said Nicholas, "your expressions are unseemly. If I chastise the Poles, it is because they have revolted against my authority; but to you they have done no harm, and you are destined to reign over them. You have no right to make any difference in your future subjects. Be assured, such sentiments make bad sovereigns."

The sentiment of gratitude was no more a stranger to the Emperor Nicholas than the spirit of justice. True, he guarded as faithfully the remembrance of injuries as of services, and if he never forgot those who had served or defended him, neither did he ever forgive those who had made the least attempt against his power. While the Troubetskois, the Mouravieffs, the Tchernicheffs, worked in the mines of Siberia, still there could be seen, at the end of his reign, several generals perfectly unqualified, yet provided with advantageous employments, without any great power, it is true, but well lodged, well fed, honored, and tranquil. If they committed any absurdity, and this frequently happened, he changed their places according to capacity, or sometimes secretly directed them in the exercise of their functions, never failing in his goodness toward them. These men, in the military revolt of 1826, had offered their swords to assist his growing power.

Strange character! Curious mixture of faults and good qualities, of littleness and grandeur; brutal and chivalrous, courageous even to temerity, and distrustful even to poltroonery; equitable and tyrannical, generous and cruel, at once the friend of ostentation and of simplicity! His palace was magnificent, his court splendid, the luxuriousness of his courtiers dazzling, while, in his own person, his habits and tastes, he affected an imposing austerity. His working cabinet was almost bare; he slept always on a camp bed. The oldness of his uniform, and of his military cloaks, was proverbial at St. Petersburg. Worn out, pieced in different places, they evidenced, by their shining neatness, how carefully they were preserved. At his repasts even, he drank no wine; he never smoked, and the odor of tobacco was so disagreeable to him that it was forbidden, not only in the Winter Palace, but in the streets of St. Petersburg. Even the Grand Duke Alexander, the czar truly, and an inveterate smoker, was obliged to sit under the mantel-piece, to enjoy the luxury of a cigar in the imperial palace.

Loving beyond everything military discipline, and rigorous in his formulas, Nicholas, who for thirty years was accustomed to this refrain, "Master, thy slave is here to obey thee"—Nicholas could only comprehend order and uniformity. Reviews were his favorite passion; during his reign, he transformed his empire into a barrack. He passed his life in manoeuvres, exercises, and miniature wars. The soldiers adored him, although he was only eclipsed in the severity of military rule by the Grand Duke Michel. It is true, the latter pushed his worship of discipline to such an extent that the emperor himself was often amused at the expense of his younger brother. One day he met an officer with his clothes torn and covered with mud, and without helmet or sword. The officer, finding himself discovered, and knowing he was to blame, was terribly frightened, and nearly fell backward in making the military salute. Nicholas fixed a severe look upon the poor devil, which made him totter. But, suddenly changing his tone and countenance, he said gayly:

"Go, dress yourself; but take good care you don't meet my brother!"

Rising with the dawn, and at work from the earliest hour of the day, whether at his palace in winter or in the field in summer, he hardened himself, as well as others, to both cold and fatigue. An excellent rider, his horses were magnificent and marvellously cared for; he always mounted alone those that were reserved for him, and out of two or three hundred sent every year to his stables for his own use, he could scarcely find a dozen to suit him. In manoeuvres I have seen him twenty times, at the moment of the loudest cannonade and in the most frightful noise, jerk, in his impatience, his horse's bit until the jagged lips of the poor beast were streaming with blood. Sometimes this torture lasted several minutes; the sides of the beautiful animal whitened with foam; he trembled in agony, and yet never lost for a moment his statue-like immobility.

Such methods of proceeding, applied by Nicholas equally to everything that surrounded him, generals, servants, horses, and courtiers, were fortunately tempered in him by the sense of justice, of which I have already spoken, and especially by the fear of public opinion, not only in Russia, but in all Europe. He seemed ashamed of the despotism he practised, and strove to conceal it from the governments and people of the West. In proportion as he affected to despise their arms, so much the more did he respect their ideas.

We know that it is customary at the court of St. Petersburg to be presented to the emperor in full uniform. And even more, that there is no condition in life, however trifling, which has not its distinctive costume. It is related that one morning Lord ——, ambassador from England, arrived in his carriage at the gate of the Winter Palace, was recognized, and went up to the apartments of the emperor. He was in his great-coat. Seeing it, the chamberlain-in-waiting, who did not dare remark this infringement of the laws of etiquette in such an important person, immediately sent word to the chancellor of the empire. Count Nesselrode, and meanwhile retained the ambassador under various pretexts. The count arrived in haste, and the morning toilet seemed to have the same effect on the chancellor as on the chamberlain.

"I am delighted to see you, my dear count," said Lord —— to M. de Nesselrode. "I wanted to speak to his majesty on some very important business, but I have been detained here nearly an hour."

"Because we do not dare, my lord—"

"Do not dare—what?"

"We cannot introduce you to the emperor in such morning négligé."

"Négligé!" said he, throwing a rapid glance at his person, and aware of his reputation for elegance, and supposing he had been guilty of some impropriety in his toilet.

"In Russia, no one is admitted in similar costume to the presence of the sovereign."

"Would full uniform be necessary?" asked smilingly the reassured ambassador.

"Exactly, my lord."

"Oh! pardon me, then. I will go dress myself." And he left, shrugging his shoulders.

The emperor was furious when he heard of the adventure.

"Cursed fools!" he grumbled, "they represent me a barbarian!"

When, an hour afterward, the ambassador returned to the palace in official uniform, the emperor excused himself with great anxiety, blaming the narrow-mindedness of his servants, and declaring loudly that he did not occupy his brain with such trifles.

"When you wish, my lord," added he, giving him his hand, "to come and see me as you did to-day, do not be incommoded, I beg of you, by any such formula."

This fear of Western irony affected all his relations with Europeans. We know the flattering reception he gave the Marquis de Custine, Horace Vernet, and twenty other illustrious strangers. Those employed in his empire were as anxious to throw dust in the eyes of travellers as himself. Nothing could be more amusing than the arrival of a stranger at St. Petersburg, under the reign of Nicholas. As no one could remain in the city without a permit, all new-comers hastened to the police to have their cards presented them, and the scenes enacted were truly comical.

The following dialogue will give a good idea of them:

"You wish to live at St. Petersburg?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long?"

Each one then fixed the probable duration of his stay.

"Well, your permit will be given you."

Here a pause. The policeman gives the necessary order, then resumes the conversation.

"Well, what do you think of St. Petersburg?"

"It is an admirable city."

"Are not our theatres as fine as those of Paris?"

"Most assuredly."

"Is not the perspective from Newski a superb view?"

"Truly."

"Do they not tell idle stories of us in Paris, and are they any freer than we?"

"Prejudices these, nothing more. Travellers, like me, are here to rectify such errors. A proof that Russia is free, I can move about with perfect liberty."

"Have you seen the emperor?"

"Yesterday evening at the Théâtre Michel."

"Is he not a remarkably handsome man?"

"The handsomest I have ever seen."

"Sir, your permit must be ready by this time. Will you go and receive it, and prolong your stay in Russia as long as you please. You will see that you have judged our country correctly."

Notwithstanding all his efforts to conciliate European opinion, the Emperor Nicholas was not rewarded in his travels by any praise whatever. Once out of his own country, he quickly discovered he had deceived no one, and his despotism was in Europe the object of universal unpopularity.

From the Holy Father he received his first lesson: a lesson, however, both given and received with dignity.

It was well known that he had changed hundreds of Catholic into Greek churches, in all the western provinces of Russia and Poland.

Curious to visit Rome, he asked permission of Gregory XVI. to enter the holy city. The pope asked, in return, by what ceremonial he wished to be received.

"As a Catholic sovereign," replied the emperor.

Lodged at the Quirinal, he went the next day in Eastern style with a guard of Cossacks to visit the holy father, who received him standing at the head of the staircase of the Vatican. Nicholas knelt to receive the benediction of the venerable pontiff, who, after having given it to him, without being at all impressed with his Attila-like costume, said to him with a serenity almost angelic:

"My son, you persecute my sheep."

"I?" cried Nicholas in a disconcerted tone.

"Yes, you, my son. You are powerful. Do not use your strength to oppress the weak."

"Holy father, I have been slandered."

The conversation continued some time in the cabinet of the pope, and the emperor remained, during his stay in Rome, on terms of the most affectionate respect with Gregory XVI. He afterward sent him a magnificent altar of malachite, that may be admired at the church of St. Paul, outside the walls. An inscription, dictated by Nicholas to St. Peter at Rome, recalls his visit to the Capital of Christianity:—"Nicholas came here to pray to God for his mother, Russia."

In London, as is well known, he was received with great popular demonstrations. We need not relate here the tumultuous scenes to which he had to submit, and how his carriage was more than once covered with mud.

With a brutality unworthy a sovereign, and at times a delicacy astonishing in a man of such a character, the most contrary qualities and defects reproduced themselves in a hundred acts of his life. For instance, one night I saw him fisticuff a poor Jew in the face, and accompany the act with the most sonorous oaths, because in giving light to the postilions of the Berlin imperial, he had awakened him with a start, by throwing the light of his lantern into his face. Again, at Warsaw, where he went to receive the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria, he took Francis Joseph into his arms to force him to occupy the seat of honor in his carriage, which the young emperor was unwilling to accept: a courtesy, according to the Cossack, that would have exactly suited him.

Yet this man, so rude and so haughty, evidenced occasionally great delicacy of sentiment. One very cold day, returning from a review, where he had been almost frozen, he stopped at the house of a lady, whom he knew to be in ill health, and met the doctor in the waiting-room.

"How is Madame ——?" said he to the latter.

"Very poorly, sire. The cold of St. Petersburg is killing her."

"Ah! the cold is injuring her? Feel my hands. They are frozen, are they not?"

"Very cold, sire."

"Well, I will wait here until they are warm; I would not for the world increase her malady."

And the emperor waited in this sort of an antechamber, talking to the doctor, until his hands resumed their natural warmth.

So this character, which, at first sight, appeared all of a piece, was composed of contrasts the most dissonant. Nicholas bared his breast to the revolted regiments in 1826 and recalled them to duty by this single attitude; at the time of the cholera, alone amid a populace mad with terror and exasperated by famine, a gesture from him, a single word, could constrain the delirious multitude and throw them on their knees before him; in cases of fire, so frequent at St. Petersburg, and under the burning beams, a hundred times he uselessly risked his life; yet on another occasion, when the safety of an empire depended upon him, he resolutely refused to repair to Sebastopol.

His long reign was fatal to Russia. For nearly thirty years it accomplished nothing. During the lifetime of Nicholas, the wheel-work of the machine moved regularly under his powerful hand, the cogs upon which he impressed the movement never being completely paralyzed. But the evil, being hidden, was not the less deep or real. Under this show of factitious strength, the downfall was already visible, and the approaching disaster keenly felt. The army, upon which Nicholas concentrated all his attention and intelligence—the army, his strength, his hope, his pride, began to be disorganized under the influence of an administration without control. Alone, the will of the czar sustained the edifice, and his pride sustained his will. And this word pride embodies to my mind the character, the conduct, the whole politics, of the Emperor Nicholas. His ruling passion was pride, a pride incommensurable, a pride such as neither Louis XIV., Henry VIII., nor Solyman the Magnificent—these three crowned representatives of capital sins—could ever equal. The idea of humiliation would leave him smiling, so entirely he believed such an event impossible. It may be truly said that he never submitted, for the first repulse he had to suffer killed him.

This pride in him passed all bounds, and touched sometimes on the aberrations of a Schahabaham. One day, one of his aides-de-camp came to him very much excited, and throwing himself at his feet:

"Sire!" cried he, "I beg your majesty to grant me a favor."

"Speak."

"Permit me to fight a duel."

"Never!" replied the emperor.

Nicholas had a horror of duels. In his eyes, all blood was criminally shed in Russia that was not for the country or in his service, and he punished the guilty in this respect most severely.

"Sire, I am dishonored. It is necessary for me to fight."

"What do you say?"

"I have been struck in the face."

"Ah!" said the emperor, contracting his brows. "But no, I cannot permit a duel. You must come with me."

And taking him by the arm, he conducted him before the assembled court, and, in presence of all, kissed him on the offended cheek.

"Go, now," said he, "and resume your tranquillity; the affront is washed out."

During the war of the Crimea, and especially in the first part of it, Nicholas, very restless, waited every day for news from the south. Each one tried his best to conceal the bad turn affairs had taken; but after the battle of the Alma, the truth had to be confessed. A courier, Colonel A., was despatched to him in great haste. He received orders to repair immediately to the czar.

"Well! what news?" said the emperor to him brusquely, giving him scarcely time to enter or fulfil the accustomed formalities of etiquette.

"The battle has been fought, sire."

"Finish!" said the emperor, with an emotion that caused his usually firm voice to tremble.

"Alas!—"

"You say—?"

"Fortune has failed us."

"We are—?"

"We are beaten, sire."

The emperor arose from his seat.

"It is impossible," said he in a quick manner.

"The Russian army has taken flight."

"You lie!" cried Nicholas with a frightful explosion of anger.

"Sire—"

"You lie. My soldiers never fly."

"Sire, I have told you the truth."

"You lie, I say, you lie."

And his eye beaming with anger, his lips contracted, his hand raised, he threw himself on the military courier and tore off his epaulettes.

"Go! You are now only a soldier."

The unhappy colonel, pale with shame, smothering his rage and the tears that rose to his eyes, went out, his soul in despair. But hardly had he reached the staircase, when he heard the voice of the emperor begging his return. He retraced his steps, and Nicholas, running to meet him, embraced him ardently, begged pardon for his brutality, and offered for his acceptance the post of aide-de-camp.

"May your majesty hold me excused," replied the poor officer; "for, in taking off" my epaulettes, you have deprived me of my honor. I leave them in your hands with my dismissal."

"You are right," replied Nicholas. "It is not in my power to repair the offence of my hasty action. Ah! we are both unhappy, and I am vanquished. Yes, completely vanquished!"

And, walking up and down with an agitated step, the subdued lion in his cage, his heart bleeding with the wound given his pride:

"Go, leave my empire," continued he, turning to Colonel A——, "and pardon me. We must not meet again. Both of us would suffer too much in each other's presence."

The mortification attending the first reverses of his army before Sebastopol was a mortal blow to his health; yet, had not his stubborn pride brought about these reverses? Self-deceived thoroughly as to the real condition of his empire, the disastrous news of the Alma came upon him like a thunder-bolt. Some honest men, sent to the different stations, signalized the imperfect state of the fortifications of Sebastopol, the disorganization of the army, the deplorable condition of the roads. They informed the emperor that the soldiers, in their march toward the south, were dying by thousands for want of sufficient nourishment and necessary clothing. Thanks to the bad quality of the grass and hay, whole regiments were in a few days entirely dismounted. And now the alarming news spread with rapidity. Each day brought fresh tidings of new embarrassments, new checks, and new misfortunes. Nicholas at last opened his eyes. He saw the colossus, with its feet of clay, tremble to its base; he felt his power crumble in his hands, his prestige fade and disappear. From the windows of Peterhoff, his loved summer residence, he could follow with his telescope the evolutions of the allied fleet. Turkey itself, hitherto so despicable in his eyes, was transformed into a redoubtable enemy. Now he began to think of the ravages that continued theft had made in his empire, the disorders in the finances, the corruption of public morals, and every one was doomed to punishments. By his order, judgments, condemnations, banishment to Caucasia and Siberia, were daily multiplied. It was too late; the gangrene had reached the wound.

Tears of grief and rage flowed with the consciousness of his impotence. He opened his eyes to the fall of Russia with each victorious flash of the allied cannons; and the edifice of terror that had taken him twenty years to build, he saw crumbling, stone by stone, and felt that the military quackery with which he had intimidated Europe had frightened no one. With the mocking pride of Titan, he bled at every pore. Repeated blows of this kind ended by undermining his constitution, till now so vigorous. Little by little he sank, bent his haughty head, and tottered, with slow and saddened step, to the grave.

It was February. Under a gray and cold sky, a penetrating, driving snow enveloped St. Petersburg in a whitened dust. The streets, the houses, the beards and furred great-coats of the passers-by, all were white. The great city resembled a giant asleep under the snow. An inexpressible sadness took possession of you, weighed down your whole being, and froze your very heart. You seemed to be at the pole itself.

On this day the emperor, an early riser as usual, came out of his bedroom and entered his cabinet, where were already assembled his general aide-de-camp, his other aides, the chamberlain, and gentlemen of the bed-chamber. Perceiving his general aide-de-camp, he called to him, and said:

"I am suffering. Send for Mandt."

"I will go myself, sire."

"Yes. I have a grand review at the end of the week, and must be there."

Mandt, his attendant physician, Prussian by birth, a man of science, and an excellent practitioner, hastened to the emperor, who, after having given his orders, had returned to his apartments.

"It will be nothing, gentlemen," said the doctor to us on leaving the imperial chamber; "only the emperor should abstain from going out, as the least imprudence may aggravate a malady which at present portends nothing serious."

The emperor remained two days in his room, and there was a sensible improvement in his condition. But his wasted figure, his dull eyes, and waxy color betrayed the existence of a hidden malady. The third day, the courier from the south brought him news—sad news, certainly, for it had been a long time since his couriers had anything happy to tell him. The next day was terribly cold, icy, heavy, impregnated with the boreal fog; yet this was the day of the review at which the czar wished to assist.

He threw a small military cloak over his uniform, and at the appointed hour left his cabinet, to mount his horse.

Mandt was waiting for him in the antechamber.

"Sire!" said the doctor to him in a supplicating voice, and trying to retain him.

"Oh! it is you, doctor. I am better, thank you."

"Yes, sire, better, but not well yet."

"Oh! indisposed merely,"

"No, sire, a serious malady. I come to beg your majesty not to go out."

"Impossible!"

"Sire, for pity's sake—"

"You are crazy, Mandt."

"Sire, you had better be resigned."

"You believe there is danger?"

"It is my duty to warn you of it."

"Well, Mandt, if you have done your duty in warning me, I will do mine by going out."

And the emperor, without listening to another word, pursued his way.

Mandt, stupefied for a moment, ran after him, and rejoined him in the court-yard, at the moment he mounted his horse.

"Sire," cried he, resuming his supplications, "deign to listen to me—"

"I have said it, Mandt. I thank you, but to insist would be useless."

"Sire, in this condition!"

"Well?"

"It is your death, sire."

"And then?"

"It is suicide."

"And who has permitted you, Mandt, to scrutinize my thoughts? Go, and insist no longer. I order you."

After the review, he returned to the palace, pale, trembling, icy cold.

"I am threatened with my malady," said he to his aide-de-camp.

"Shall I send for Mandt?"

"Useless; he has already warned me."

"He warned your majesty?"

"Yes; that I would kill myself."

The aide-de-camp turned pale.

"Ah sire! what do I hear?"

"To die, is it not the best thing I can do? Farewell, my old friend, I have need of rest. Let no one disturb me."

All night the imperial family, who had been apprised of his condition, the doctors, Mandt and Rasel, united in the anteroom, waited with anxiety—not daring to knock at the door of the emperor—for the moment he might call to them. Obedience, in this court, was so blindly servile that it imposed silence on the most natural and imperious sentiments. Toward two o'clock something was heard between a groan and a sigh. Mandt thought he might knock gently at the door of the imperial chamber.

"I have forbidden any one to disturb me," murmured the emperor, in a voice still feeble, but which retained an accent of authority.

That night was spent in mortal inquietude, in inexpressible anguish, and not until the next morning was the doctor informed by the valet de chambre that his august patient would like to see him.

"Well, Mandt, you were right. I believe I am a dead man."

These were the first words of Nicholas.

"O sire! I spoke as I did to dissuade your majesty from so great an imprudence."

"Let us see: look me in the face and tell me if there is yet hope."

"I believe so, sire."

"I tell you I am a dead man. I feel it. Go on, make use of your trade. Sound my lungs; I know that science will confirm my conviction."

Mandt, having accomplished the orders of the emperor, shook his head.

"Well?"

"Sire—"

"You are troubled, Mandt; your hand trembles. See, I have more courage than you. Come, let us have the sentence, and quickly, for I have to settle my affairs in this world, and I have a great many of them."

"Your majesty troubles yourself unnecessarily. No case is ever desperate, and with the grace of God—"

Nicholas gazed at his doctor fixedly in the eyes.

The latter looked down confusedly.

"You know, Mandt, I cannot be deceived easily. Let us have the truth now, and only the truth. Do you think that Nicholas does not know how to die?"

"Sire—"

"Well?"

"In forty-eight hours you will be dead or saved."

"Thank you, Mandt," said Nicholas in a voice of deep emotion. "Now good-by, and send me my family."

The doctor prepared to leave the room.

"Mandt!" called Nicholas, on seeing him direct his steps toward the door.

"Sire."

"Let us embrace each other, my good old friend. We will perhaps never meet again on earth. You have been an honest and faithful servant. I will recommend you to my son."

"What do you say, sire? Never see you again! I sincerely hope the contrary, and that my attentions—"

"Your attentions will be superfluous. There will be time for me only to see my ministers and my priest, and make my peace with God. Human science can do no more for me, and, indeed, I do not wish to try it."

"And now at the close, sire, I revolt," cried the doctor. "I have no right, and my duty forbids my thus abandoning you."

"Mandt, do you answer for my cure?"

The doctor hung his head, and could not reply.

"Farewell, then, my friend."

"Sire, if not, then, as your physician, permit me as a devoted servant to see you again. Who can tell? God is great! and for the destiny of the Russia which he protects, may work a miracle."

"And because I know that God protects Russia, so neither do I wish nor hope for my restoration to health. Mandt, let my family come now. I assure you the time will soon fail me."

Mandt wept. With tears in his eyes, he went out and related to the courtiers his conversation with the emperor. Strange contradiction! This man, whom I have tried to depict as so severe and haughty, was adored by all who approached him. Courtiers, soldiers, servants, burst into tears. Lost in the crowd with them, I mingled my complaints and prayers.

Then, after the empress and the grand hereditary duke, the imperial family, all in tears, entered the apartment of the emperor. The door closed upon them, and all that passed there, all that was said in this supreme grief, only God knew. Mandt, however, with a voice choked with emotion, continued his recital, and we listened to him with the keenest attention. How and by what indiscretion the news he had just given us was spread in the city, I cannot tell; but already, before the death of the czar, it was believed at St. Petersburg that Mandt had helped to poison him. From this to the pretended act itself there was but one step toward belief, and this was soon overcome; so the exasperation, true or false, against the honest doctor, knew no bounds, and they would have torn him to pieces in the streets. The name of Nicholas still inspired such terror that every one endeavored to give some public demonstration of grief as a claim on his benevolence in the event of his returning to life. Yet after his death these manifestations changed their character, and the contrast between such marks of affection and the epithets with which they loaded his memory when they were certain he really ceased to exist, was a lesson for kings to contemplate. For the time, though, the anger of the people against the poor doctor was so blindly furious, that it is related of a thief, seized by the collar by a passerby, from whom he had tried to steal his watch, that in order to escape, he raised the cry, "Hist! hist! it's Mandt, comrades, it's Mandt!"

The interview between the emperor and his family lasted three hours, three long hours, during which expectation for us was changed into real anguish. By degrees retired, one by one, the children, the grand-children, and his brothers. The grand hereditary duke came out last, bathed in tears. An hour flew by, and not a sound was heard from the imperial chamber; no one dared enter. Mandt listened attentively, holding his breath. Suddenly a loud noise was heard in the corridors; a courier from Sebastopol arrived. As the whole court knew the impatience with which the emperor awaited the news from the Crimea, the aide-de-camp general on duty, thinking to please the emperor, knocked at his door.

"Do they still want me?" murmured the emperor; "tell them to let me rest."

"Sire, a courier from Sebastopol."

"Let him address himself to my son; this concerns me no longer."

Soon the primate, followed by the clergy, arrived to offer the last consolations of the church. Then the ministers were presented, the Count Orlof at their head. This lasted during the night. At ten o'clock, the emperor asked for the officers of his household. His face already bore the impress of death; a cadaverous paleness betrayed the progress of the decomposition that preceded the fatal moment; lying on his camp-bed, he addressed us some farewell words, which the first strokes of death-rattle interrupted, and took leave of us with a waive of his hand. None of us slept that night in the Winter Palace, none of us after that hour ever saw the emperor alive.

The next day, the 18th of February, at mid-day, the grand chamberlain of the palace was sent for by the physicians to the imperial bed. At half-past twelve o'clock, returning among us, "Nicholas Paulowitch is dead," said he.

We went out silent and sad.

The next day, on the walls of St. Petersburg could be read this inscription: "Russia, grateful to the Emperor Nicholas I. for the 18th of February, 1855."

Translated From The French
Of The Pere Landriot—
Addressed To Women Of The World.

Household Duties.

"She giveth meat to her household,
and a portion to her maidens."

We finished the question, vulgar perhaps in one sense, yet so important in many others, of sleep: [Footnote 211] a benefit of divine Providence accorded us each day to repair our strength, renew our life, and provide for the weakness and precipitation of man; a time for repose and sage counsel.

[Footnote 211: See "Early Rising" in The Catholic World for September, 1867.]

Sleep is a precious dictate, a solitary bath for body and soul, and a prudent counsellor and daily preacher to remind us of our approaching and last departure. But like all good things, sleep is subject to abuse, and then it produces effects entirely contrary to the will of the Creator: weakening, stupefying, and dulling the faculties, it becomes for humanity a living sepulchre. If the abuse of sleep coincides with the quality, that is to say, if the hours by nature destined to it are considerably changed—night turned into day, and day into night—the constitution is assuredly ruined, and an infirm old age prepared, a never-ceasing convalescence. Parties and midnight revels have killed more women than the most exaggerated mortifications and if religion commanded the sacrifice the world requires of its votaries, the recriminations against it would be unending. In a hygienic light, physical as well as moral, it is better to retire and rise early. Everything gains by it—health, business, and the facility and excellence of prayer. But we must not dissimulate; and the struggle with the pillow is, in its very sweetness, one of the most violent that can exercise man's courage; and to break these chains of bed, it is necessary to exercise an almost superhuman energy. The enemy is deceitful, dangerous in his caresses, and generally ends in persuading us; we think he is right; and, after all, it is a cruelty to martyrize ourselves. I have not wished, ladies, to conceal the difficulties; but I have pleaded my cause, which is also yours. To your wisdom and reason I submit it, and I trust to succeed at such a tribunal. If you wish to appeal, and present the cause before the tribunal of Idleness, listening to its numerous lawyers, in advance I may tell you the first judgment will be suspended. Well, I will consent to lose, but on one condition—that you will insert this explanation in the judgment: that the case was gained before Judge Reason; but that, in the supreme court of Indolence, Idleness, surrounded by his lawyers, revoked the decision.

Now for the end of our text: "The strong woman giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens."

Formerly, ladies, when families and societies were truly Christian, the domestics, according to the etymology of the word, were really a part of the house; for domestic comes from the Latin word domus, which signifies house. In those days, a family formed a body; the father and mother were head, and the domestics themselves had their place in the organization of the family; they were only subordinate members, but they were a part of the body. Therefore, they always lived in the house, passed their lives there; and when they were no longer able to work, they were cared for with paternal and filial affection; and when the hour of death came to them by length of time, they had fallen into decay as a branch dying on its trunk. The relations of benevolence and Christian charity united masters to servants; and while the latter accepted the place of inferiority, they felt themselves loved, and loving in return, a tie was formed stronger than massive gold—the tie of love. Saint Augustine speaks to us with much feeling of the nurse who cared for his mother's infancy, and who had even carried on her back the father of St. Monica, as young girls then carried little children: "Sicut dorso grandiuscularum puellarum parvuli portari solent." [Footnote 212]

[Footnote 212: Confessions, i. 9, c 8.]

"This remembrance," continued St. Augustine, "her old age, the excellence of her manners, assured her in a Christian house the veneration of her masters, who had committed to her the care of their daughters; her zeal responded to their confidence; and while she exercised a saintly firmness to correct them—to instruct, she was always guided by an admirable prudence."

Nowadays, ladies, things have changed. Such examples are rare; but without doubt, there are still honorable exceptions—servants who love their masters, and who make part of the family as true children of the house, serving with ease and gentleness, because they are guided principally by affection, and bearing the faults of their masters, who, in return, are patient with them, until household affairs glide on with a smoothness which, though sometimes very imperfect, is, after all, a small evil. Yes, we do still find Christian families where domesticity is thus understood; but alas! they become rarer every day! In our time, owing to a spirit of pride, independence and irreligion are spreading everywhere; good servants are hard to find, and perhaps also good masters; and as two fireplaces placed opposite each other are mutually overheated, so the bad qualities of the domestics increase those of the masters, and vice versâ. Servants have exaggerated pretensions; they will not bear the least reproof; everything wounds them; and on the other side, masters do not command in a Christian spirit. Thus, everywhere is heard a general concert of complaint and recrimination; masters accuse their servants, servants do as little as possible for their masters; and certain houses become like omnibuses, where the servants enter only to get out again at their convenience.

I have told you, ladies, that, if I had to preach to your husbands, I could add a kind of counterpart, not adverse to your interests, but to complete my instructions; but, addressing myself to you, my words must be limited to your duties. I would add here, also, that, if I had to preach to your servants, I would be obliged to give them advice very useful for your household organization; but they are absent; my instruction is to you; so I must leave in shadow all their shortcomings.

It appears to me your duties to them will be well accomplished if you enter into the spirit of this text: "She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens." Look at the sun; it rises on the horizon, and, in shedding its beams, seems to distribute work to every creature, and, by way of recompense, prepares their nourishment in advance. Is it not he who, while lighting the world, invites the artisan to his shop, the laborer to his field, and the pilot to leave his port? Is it not he who prepares the germs in the bosom of the earth—who warms them, and conducts them to that point of maturity that the statesman waits for as impatiently as the laborer? "Woman," says the Scripture, "should be the sun of her household." She should lighten and warm like the planet of the day. Her rays are emitted in indicating to each one his duties, in distributing the work in wise and suitable proportions, and, when all is justly ordered, superintending its execution. Then everything goes on admirably, because brightened by the spirit of regularity that guides the mistress of the house. Her glance, given to all around her, projects the light; and this light is the strongest and most insinuating of counsellors, as well as a gracious but severe monitor. A woman who presides well over her household need talk but little; her presence speaks for her, and the simple conviction that she has her eyes everywhere, and that the least detail is not unknown to her, prevents any irregularity. But see, on the contrary, a house where the mistress rises late, and sleeps morally the rest of the day. Everything is left to chance; disorder introduces itself everywhere, in heads as in business; a general pell-mell of ideas and objects—a confusion which recalls the primitive chaos. Madam sleeps late, the servants rise only a little earlier; during the day, madam dreams, occupies herself with her toilet, in matinees, and visits, and the house, given up to itself, becomes what it may. The children are almost abandoned, and work accumulates in the most delightful disorder.

Woman, the sun of her house, should not be satisfied to illuminate it; she should warm it also, and with her heart.

You ought, ladies, to watch your servants, demand an account of their proceedings in-doors and out, watch over them particularly in their connection with your children; for too often the heart and mind are lost by servants, and, were it permitted to reveal all the human heart can tell us in this respect, you would be seriously alarmed.

About twenty years ago, I had charge of a seminary. One day I received a visit from a very indignant father, who told me with bitterness that his child had been corrupted in our establishment. I knew to the contrary; but I had no defence to offer, so in silence I bore an unmerited reproach. Some time afterward I had permission to speak, when I was able to prove to him that it was in his own house that his child was lost, by keeping company with a servant.

Watch, then, your children, ladies, by watching your servants. Watch their going out and coming in, their bearing and their company; watch their words and actions. But, I beg of you, watch with kindness, for the light of your supervision should be warm with Christian affection. Love your servants, and always remember that they are human—the image of God, and that they have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. As much as possible, speak to them with kindness, and, if an occasional impatience escapes you, endeavor to repair it by sincere benevolence. That your watchfulness may not engender suspicion and restlessness, do not appear a spy on their actions. We often make people good by believing them so, and bad by accusing them of qualities they do not possess; or, at least, we freeze their hearts, and permanently harden them. Avoid everything which appears like ill-humor, meanness, or caprice. To-day madam is in a good humor, and all goes well; the servants may be as merry, and make as many mistakes as they please; nobody notices them. To-morrow the moon reddens in its first quarter: woe to the inhabitants of the house! woe to the servants! Madam's coffee is cold, yet it bears its ordinary temperature; the soup is too salty, yet the usual quantity was put into it. The room is full of smoke, it was the servant's fault, and yet the poor creature made neither the wind nor the chimney. A racket in the kitchen; madam's voice is heard from the cellar to the garret— from the court-yard to the neighboring houses. Nothing renders authority more ridiculous than such conduct. The servants are tired out; they lose every sentiment of affection and confidence, because they see no regard is shown them; that they are considered inferior beings, entitled to no respect; and that, even on days when caprice is not predominant, they only encounter airs of silent pride and haughtiness.

Without doubt, ladies, there is a just medium to be preserved. Many servants are unreasonable, and take advantage of favors accorded them; are exacting and indiscreet; they require masters without faults, and are completely blinded to their own. "Treat them as friends," said an ancient philosopher, "and they lack submission; keep them at a distance, and they resent your conduct and hate you." [Footnote 213]

[Footnote 213: Confucius, Entr. Philos. c. 17.]

The middle course of wisdom is therefore hard to find; but it is so in all worldly affairs, yet it is necessary to resolve it. The heart of a Christian woman appears to me best adapted for this work of conciliation; she can preserve her authority by demonstrating a wise firmness, recalling the words of Fenelon: "The less reason you find in men, the more fear requisite to restrain them." [Footnote 214] The strong woman must be able to cope with such difficult minds, often so pretentious and ridiculous in their exactions, and put them in their place when wisdom and occasion demand it. But, in her ordinary conduct, let her remember that she commands her brethren, for whom our Lord died; that love and gentleness are the best, the most Christian roads to persuasion, and that severity should always be reserved for circumstances where reason and charity fail.

[Footnote 214: De l'Education des Filles, c. 12.]

Fenelon says again that, in certain houses, "servants are considered no better than horses—of natures like theirs—human beasts of burden for their masters." [Footnote 215] Nothing can be more opposed to sentiments of faith and reason; servants are brothers, to be loved and treated as such; they owe you their service and fidelity, and if they fail, recall them to duty prudently, with a charitable compassion and firmness that does not exclude affection. A single word will often dispel a cloud and dissipate increasing shadows, and give you, in return, the deep and solid friendship of your servants. Is this not far better than forced relations, coldness and constraint that freeze the heart and poison innumerable lives? The fable itself teaches us a lesson in telling us that the friendship of the ant is not to be despised.

[Footnote 215: Ibid.]

"The strong woman giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens." The spirit of God neglects no detail, because in life everything is important. Let your servants work; nothing is better for them; but do not traffic with either their food or duties. Treat them a little like the children of the house; you will not only interest your charity, but your service will gain by it. Do not calculate with an avaricious hand what may do them good and alleviate their lot. You will gain on one side what you lose on the other; and besides, is not the true affection of a devoted heart worth more than a piece of gold? It is not only food and material comforts you must assure your servants. How I love to see the Christian woman enlarge her maternal heart and reserve in it not only a place for her children, but for all the people of her household! Yes, she must have a mother's affection for all, and let the least one understand that he has part in the warmth of her soul and the fireside of her heart. Thus she realizes the comparison that I always love to repeat, because she is truly great in her splendor and simplicity, and, in proportion as she is examined, new aspects are discovered; then the strong woman is the sun of her household: sicut sol oriens.

The planet of day sheds its light on the clouds, the high mountains, and the gilded palaces, but he never omits the little valley flower or the blade of grass that claims his warmth. He does not give it so abundantly as to the oaks of the mountain, but it is always the same light, and suffices for their life and happiness. Thus the strong woman pours her intimate affections on her family and her true friends, but her soul has still a reserve for her servants. She gives them less than her husband and children, but it is all from the same source, and bears with it for them the same unction.

After such a distribution of work, of care and affection, do not expect to find no faults in your servants. To these servants, I would say: Bear with the faults of your masters and mistresses; the best of them are imperfect, and for you the true way to modify their defects is to reply only by patience and an immovable docility; sweetness and patience do much more than anger and violent recrimination, as various elastic substances are, we know, among the best agents to arrest the impetuous movement of the cannon-ball. To you, ladies, I say: Bear with the faults of your servants, as they are never wanting. With two such sureties, with the certainty of patience on the part of the servants, and in return on that of the masters, you will be sure to pacifically organize the interior of your households. If the tether of patience is short at one end, you can stretch it at the other; and such is the admirable teaching of Christianity, wherever the relations of mankind exist, it establishes reciprocal duties on so firm and solid a foundation that, if one is lacking, the other becomes more strong to resist it. Thus it preaches to the husband love and respect; to the wife, love, respect, and submission; to masters, benevolence; to servants, deference and patience; but in such a way that, if the first are faithless to their duties, the fidelity of the second will more than repair the defect. Nature evidently holds another language; if our neighbor fails in his obligations, we believe ourselves freed from ours, and this spirit of free exchange in point of bad proceedings is not, perhaps, one of the least causes of our perturbations in the family and society.

"There are some faults," says Fenelon, "that enter into the marrow of the bones." "Then," said the Archbishop of Cambrai, "if you wish to correct such in your servant, he is not wrong to resist correction, but you are foolish to undertake it." [Footnote 216]

[Footnote 216: Lettres Spirituelles, 193, t. 1. p. 554, éd. Didiot.]

You have a horse that is one-eyed, you would wish him to see clearly with both eyes; it is you who are entirely blind. Alas ladies! in this world we are all slightly one-eyed, therefore we must bear with each other.

You have a servant who does not always display the judgment you require of him; tell me, why do you employ him in any delicate business? He has made a blunder, but were you not the first cause of it? You have another who never sees more than a few steps before him; you cannot expect better of him, he is short-sighted. You are angry because he cannot see leagues off; you are the unreasonable one. Another one is lame, and him you would have walk straight; do you not see that you exact the impossible? I tell you, ladies, that poor human nature is full of weaknesses, and having once perceived certain infirmities in your neighbor, keep them in remembrance, and don't demand a reform in what cannot be corrected. "Bear ye one another's burdens," said Saint Paul; it is the rule of true wisdom, of peace and domestic happiness: "Alter alterius onera portate." [Footnote 217]

[Footnote 217: Galat. vi. 2.]

But, you say, he is thick-headed, I cannot put up with him. Alas! thick heads we meet with everywhere. Have you not yourselves sometimes the same complaint? Besides, don't be so hard to please in servants; you may end by finding none at all. You have one who pouts, another who is violent; you may have one impertinent, another pettish; choose between them. The best course, believe me, is to put up with the evil, provided it is bearable. This world and all it contains is only one grand misery; accept your share of it; murmuring and changing those who surround you will do no good.

Well and good, I hear you say. You have just spoken of those who keep many servants; I am more modest; a nurse, or at most a cook, constitutes my household. In this case, if you will permit me, I will find you an establishment where the retainers are numerous and very difficult to govern. The fathers of the church teach us that the human soul, in its organization, is a house complete in itself. We find in it intelligence, the soul properly called, the imagination, and the senses. Intelligence is the husband, the soul the wife; and imagination, with its numerous caprices, represents an establishment of troublesome servants; while the five senses may portray five grooms at the carriage-ways opening into the street. To listen to such a world as this, and make it agree, is no easy matter. Intelligence wishes one thing, the soul another; the husband and wife are just ready to quarrel. Then imagination comes in with its thousand phantoms, its fantastical noises, its clatter by night and by day: can you not believe your household in good condition to exercise your patience? Then the porters of this castle, the eyes, the ears, without considering the nerves—a sort of busy battalion which makes more noise than all the rest. What an interior! what confusion! what a tower of Babel! Ladies, I will repeat here the words of Scripture: "Rise early to give work and a portion" to this establishment of servants; put them in order from the first dawn of day. Clear up your imagination; it needs more time and care than a disordered head of hair. See how your ideas fly hither and thither; how the mad one of this dwelling sings and grows impertinent; how she reasons, how she scolds, and how absurd she is. Intelligence would restore her reason; useless to try! time lost! She cries louder, and becomes longer and more violently nonsensical. She makes so much noise that it could be called, according to Saint Gregory, the multiplied voices of several servants, whose tongues are perfectly sharpened: "Cogitationum se clamor, velut garrula ancillarum turba, multiplicat." [Footnote 218]

[Footnote 218: Moral, i. I, c. 30, t 1. p. 546, éd, Migné.]

Here is a beautiful household to organize every morning. You complain of having no work for it. I have just found you some. Bring peace into the midst of this distraction; substitute harmony for confusion, and so adjust this harmony that it shall last undisturbed until evening, and I will give you a brevet, a certificate, as an excellent mistress of a house. Formerly, the poor human head was not subject to such distraction; and why? Because it was subject to God; and from thence all the powers of man, mind, heart, will, imagination, senses, all were submitted to the head of the house, because this head himself was obedient to God. Since the primitive revolt, all has been upset in man; and our poor nature has become like a house where all dispute, husband, wife, and servants, that is, mind, heart, imagination. There is a simple way to re-establish peace, not quite complete, but at least tolerable, for this would bring back God into the house: let God be head, the commander of all; let the thought of him preside everywhere, and soon order will be entirely restored. In the morning especially, I know nothing that can pacify us interiorly and calm all around us better than a look toward heaven, a thought of love directed on high, and bringing, in return, the peace of God. In the morning, if the head aches, rest it at the foot of the cross; if the heart suffers, place it on the heart of our Lord; if the imagination is feverish, calm it with a drop of the blood of Jesus Christ; and if the whole being is in ebullition, ask God to send it refreshment in the dew of heaven! Be faithful to these recommendations, ladies, and you may repose the length of the day under your vine and your fig-tree; that is, you will enjoy the intimate happiness that God has promised his friends, and which is one of the sweetest recompenses of virtue: "Et sedit unusquisque sub vite suâ, et ficulneâ, suâ, et non erat qui eos terreret." [Footnote 219]

[Footnote 219: I Mach. xiv. 12.]

A Sister's Story. [Footnote 220]

[Footnote 220: A Sister's Story. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated from the French by Emily Bowles. 8vo, pp. 539. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]

We do not usually go to France for pictures of domestic life; yet, when we do find a cultivated French family penetrated with the home instincts which are so much more common on the opposite side of the channel, and lavishing upon the members of their own household an affection elevated and sanctified by true piety, there is a charm about the scene which is apt to be wanting in our own more commonplace experience. The charm, to be sure, often asserts itself too boldly; for the Frenchman has a keen relish for sentiment, and in nine cases out of ten the rapture with which love fills his heart is only half of it inspired by the object of his passion, while the other half is an unconscious admiration of the delicacy of his own feelings. He makes a romance out of love for his father and mother, and his affection for his sweetheart is an extravagant poem. Still, unless you analyze it too closely, which there is no need of your doing at all, the poem is almost always beautiful and delicate, and sometimes possesses the true poetical aroma. A Sister's Story is a romance of love, trial, happiness, and death. Nobody but a French woman could have written it; yet the sentiment is not what is commonly called "Frenchy," because it is etherealized by a genuine Christian refinement, and because, moreover, it is a true history.

The Count de la Ferronnays, who was French ambassador at St. Petersburg in 1819, and afterward at Rome, had a large family of children, one of whom, Pauline, married an English gentleman, and is the author of this book. Another, Albert, is the hero. They all loved one another with a rare and touching tenderness, and loved God, too, with a simple and unaffected devotion. The revolution of 1830 deprived the Count of his diplomatic appointment, despoiled him of most of his fortune, and, as he was a stanch adherent of the Bourbons, left him without hope of a future career in the service of the state. The family seem, however, to have accepted their reverses cheerfully, and to have made little change in their way of life, except by practising a stricter economy than they had been used to. They passed most of their time in Italy, mingling with people of rank and distinction, or travelling in search of health, as one or another of them showed symptoms of approaching disease. Albert was a young man of handsome appearance, and, we should judge, of no mean accomplishments. He was warm-hearted, remarkably sensitive, somewhat of a dreamer, romantic, poetical, and pure in heart. The life of a man of society he sanctified with the piety of a recluse. The revolution which cut short his father's public career destroyed also the young man's prospects in life, and left him, just entering manhood, without fixed occupation, and without much hope of obtaining employment suitable to his rank and tastes. This enforced idleness, coupled with the delicacy of his constitution, already perhaps undermined by the pulmonary disease which was so soon to carry him off, predisposed him to a melancholy reflectiveness which, though corrected by his devout aspirations, was nevertheless morbid. The feminine delicacy of his nature was developed by close intimacy with his sisters, and his religious elevation was doubtless heightened by his frequent intercourse with Montalembert, whose sentiments he fully shared, though he was unable to join in his labors, with M. Rio, whom he accompanied to various parts of Italy, with the Abbé Gerbet, and with other distinguished Catholics of that brilliant day.

Among the acquaintances of the Count's family in Rome was the Countess d'Alopeus, widow of the celebrated Russian plenipotentiary at Berlin, and afterward wife of Prince Lapoukhyn. She had a daughter, Alexandrine, a beautiful and amiable girl, apparently, like Albert, of a pensive turn of mind, and, though a Lutheran, (her mother being a German,) of a strongly religious disposition. Albert fell in love with her the first time they met, and from that time love and religion filled up all the rest of his short life. It was but a little while before Alexandrine learned to return the tender sentiment. The intimacy ripened fast; but there were many difficulties in the way of marriage, and it was only after two years, marked by severe trials, that they were at last united in 1834. Ten days afterward Albert burst a blood-vessel, and from that time until his death, in 1836, their happiness was clouded by the gradual approach of the untimely fate which they could hardly help foreseeing. The picture which Mrs. Craven, with the help of the journals and letters of this dear young couple, has drawn of their courtship, their love, their few hours of happiness, and their admirable married life, with all its consolations and all its sufferings, is full of the most delicious beauty. It could not have been so natural, had it not been drawn from the life; it would not have been so exquisite, had not the artist been herself a poet.

By the side of her husband's dying bed, Alexandrine was received into the Catholic Church. She appears to have possessed a stronger though not a more lovely character than Albert, and in her widowhood its magnificence was fully developed. During the twelve years she survived her husband, she learned to the full the great lessons of self-abnegation, humility, and detachment from all worldly things. Even in the first days of her sorrow, God rewarded her with a strength which surprised all who knew her; and this was succeeded after a while by a completeness of resignation and a spiritual joy which were no less than saint-like. "We shall see," writes Mrs. Craven, in beginning the narrative of these final years, "by what efforts of resignation, by what self-surrender, she obtained peace, and entered upon that other period of her life which she speaks of in her story, and of which she once said, 'Even before old age and death, faith gave me rest!' This rest, which went beyond resignation, even beyond peace, which Alexandrine had soon recovered; a rest which marked the latter part of her life by a joyousness unknown to her young days, she did not attain till she had gone through many fresh sorrows. It was God's will that she should outlive most of those who had proved her firmest friends and most tender comforters in her widowhood. Almost at one time she lost her own brother, my father, Eugénie, and Olga," (Albert's sisters, to whom she was deeply attached.) "It may be that this was allowed that, when after such repeated blows she was still able to say she was happy, no one might mistake the source whence that happiness sprang." She gave herself up to the service of the poor and suffering, and in order to make herself more like the objects of her charity, whom she loved so tenderly, she used to deprive herself of all the little every-day luxuries and conveniences which belonged to her station, and in which naturally she took a particular delight. She made trial of a conventual life, but that was clearly not the path in which God wished her to walk, and her director bade her leave it. During the latter part of her life she resided principally with Albert's mother, in Paris. Here is a picture of her occupations at that time:

"To meet the deficiency in her resources, she gradually restricted her own expenditure to the narrowest compass, and deprived herself of everything short of absolute necessaries. One day I happened to look into her wardrobe, and was dismayed at its scantiness. When we, any of us, made this kind of discovery, she blushed and smiled, made the best excuses she could find in return for our scoldings, and then went on just the same, giving away all she possessed, and finding every day new occasions for these acts of self-spoliation. She had, of course, long ago sold or given away all her jewels and trinkets, but, if she ever happened to find among her things an article of the smallest value, it was immediately disposed of for the benefit of the poor. For instance, one day she took out of its frame a beautiful miniature of Princess Lapoukhyn at the age of twenty, and sold the gold and enamel frame, defending herself by saying that it was the only thing of value she still possessed, and did not in the least enhance the value of her mother's charming likeness. Two black gowns, and a barely sufficient amount of linen, constituted her whole wardrobe, so that she had reduced herself, as far as was possible in her position of life, to a state of actual poverty. Her long errands were almost always performed on foot, and at dinner-time she came home often covered with dirt and wet to the skin. One day, when she was visiting some Sisters of Charity in a distant part of Paris, one of them looked at her from head to foot, and then begged an alms for a poor woman much in need of a pair of shoes. Alexandrine instantly produced her purse and gave the required amount, with which the sister went away, and in a quarter of an hour returned, laughing, and bringing with her a pair of shoes, which she insisted on Madame Albert's putting on instead of those she was wearing, which were certainly in the worst possible condition. On her return from these distant excursions, she usually put on her evening dress and came down to Madame de Mun's drawing-room, where she found my mother, who also had often been engaged in similar charitable duties. During that winter I often joined this little circle, now so thinned by death, and so soon to break up altogether. For one brief moment I would fain pause and look back in thought to that well-remembered room and its long table, at which my mother and Madame de Mun were wont to sit, with Eugénie's children playing at their feet; and at the place near the lamp, where Alexandrine was to be seen every evening, with her head bending over her work; her brown hair divided into two long plaits, a way of wearing it which particularly became her, though it was certainly not chosen on that account. She did not, however, profess to be free from all thought about her appearance; on the contrary, she was always accusing herself of still caring for admiration; and when once she heard that somebody who had accidentally spoken to her had said she was pretty, she exclaimed with half-jesting indignation: 'I really believe that, if I were in my last agony, that would please me still!' Very pretty certainly she looked on those evenings, in her simple black dress; always calm and serene, and brightening up whenever the great interests and objects of life were the subjects of conversation. Otherwise she remained silent, occupying herself with her embroidery, or else, taking her little book of extracts, so full of beautiful thoughts, from her pocket, she read them over and added new ones from her favorite books.

......

"Time never hung heavy on Alexandrine's hands. After such trials and sufferings, she could say as Madame Swetchine did: 'that life was lovely and happy; and ever, as it went on, fairer, happier, and more interesting.' The melancholy which was natural to her character in youth, and which the radiant happiness that for a moment filled up her life had not been able to overcome—that melancholy which was the sign perhaps of some kind of softness of soul, and which so many deaths and such floods of tears could naturally have increased—had been completely put down and overcome by the love of God and the poor. One day as I saw her moving about her room which she had made so bare, with an air of the greatest gayety, we both of us suddenly recalled the terrible days of the past, when her grief had been full of gloom, and then she said, what was very striking to any one who knew how deep was her unutterable love to the very last, 'Yes, that is all true; those were cruel and dreadful days; but now, by God's grace, I mourn for my Albert gayly.'"

Subsequently she was admitted, as a lodger, to the convent of St. Thomas of Villanova, in Paris, and there she died with the peacefulness and holy joy which she had merited by her life. By what austerities she had prepared for and probably hastened her end, we may judge from this incident:

"One morning at Mass in the convent chapel, a lady happened to hear her cough, and noticing her pale looks and poor apparel, she went to one of the sisters, and told her that there was a lady in the church who was probably too poor to provide herself with necessaries, and that she should be very happy to supply her with milk daily, if she had not the means to purchase it. This kind soul was quite ashamed when the sister told her the poor lady was Madame Albert de la Ferronnays; but Alexandrine, much amused, laughed exceedingly at the mistake, and did not treat herself better than before."

One loving hand which has traced this beautiful story whose outlines we have thus roughly reproduced, has illustrated it with many touching reminiscences of the other members of the charming family circle, of which Albert and Alexandrine are the central figures. There is an exquisite pathos in every page, and

"The tender grace of a day that is dead"

is delineated with an unaffected delicacy which must move every heart. Miss Bowles, we should add, has proved herself an admirable translator, so good a one that her version reads like an original.

Translated From The French.
Breton Legend Of St. Christopher.

As every one knows, St. Christopher had very broad shoulders; so in former times he was ferryman for the river of Scorff. One bright day, our Lord arrived at the bank of the river with his twelve apostles. Christopher made haste to take them in his arms, and was delighted to pay them every possible respect.

"Well," said our Lord, "what are your wages?"

"Ask for Paradise," whispered St. Peter.

"Let me alone, I have my own ideas. If, my Lord, you desire to bestow a favor on me, promise that every object I wish for shall be obliged to enter my sack."

"I will do it," said our Lord, "but on condition that you never ask for money, and only for those things of which you have need."

So, for a long time, things went well; the sack filled only with bread, fruits, beans, and other vegetables; and often it was emptied for the benefit of the poor. But alas! who can say they may not enter into temptation? One morning Christopher was passing through the street of a neighboring town, when he stopped before the shop of a money-changer. He did wrong, for all those heaps of money excited his curiosity and gave him very bad thoughts.

"See," said the wicked broker to him, "what you can do with all this money! You can rebuild the huts of the poor, and make life for them so happy and desirable. Don't you wish it was all yours?"

Christopher had a moment of weakness, and the money jumped into his bag. But don't be severe: Christopher was not yet the saint he afterward became, only a mere mortal man. So this first failing led to others, and while it must be confessed he was very generous to the poor, he loved his own good cheer and did not hesitate to enjoy it. So one day, as he was reposing on the grass after an unusually good dinner, the devil passed that way, and began to bully him and crack some of his disagreeable jokes. Christopher was not remarkably patient, his fists were itching for a fight, so in a moment he was on his feet and pitched into the devil right royally. As the forces were pretty equal, the battle lasted two days, and the end could not be foreseen. The thick grass disappeared from under their feet, and from afar the noise of the blows resounded like two hammers falling and refalling one upon the other. They would have been at it yet if Christopher had not happily thought of his sack. "Ah cursed devil! by the virtue of our Lord thou shalt enter my sack." So in he popped, and Christopher was not slow to draw the cords tight and swing him over his shoulders, while he wondered at the same time how in the world he would ever get rid of him. A forge appeared as he walked, and two brawny men were beating the red fire with tremendous blows. This gave him an idea; so he addressed himself to the smiths, and said: "I have got a wicked animal in my bag; I could not pretend to tell you all the villanous tricks he has played in his life; so, if you will forge him until he is about as thick as a sixpenny piece, I will give you a crown." They consented; and, notwithstanding the cries and somersaults of the devil, they hammered and beat him the whole night long. When the day dawned, a weak voice cried out, "Christopher, Christopher, I give up; what shall I do to get out of this?"

"Swear obedience to me for ever, and never trouble me again."

"I swear it."

"Very well; get out with you, and I will not say Au revoir."

From this moment, Christopher entirely changed his life, only occupied himself in good works, and, when he grew too feeble to be ferryman for the river Scorff, he retired into the little hermitage, upon the ruins of which is built the chapel still to be seen. There he lived in prayer and penitence, and was visited by many pilgrims, who were attracted by his great reputation of sanctity. However, when after his death he presented himself to St. Peter, who, we know, holds the keys of Paradise, he was refused admittance, because the latter said he had formerly rejected his advice, and he feared to let him in.

The poor Christopher, very sad, and looking rather snubbed, wandered about, and in his distraction took the stairs that led to hell. He descended an unheard-of number of steps, and finally arrived at a door, where was a very good-looking young man, who courteously invited him to enter; but Satan happened to pass by, and, seeing him, cried out nervously: "No, no! not in here; I know him well. Send him away, he is entirely too cunning for me!"

So Christopher could do nothing but remount to the entrance of Paradise, where he could at least listen outside to the delicious strains of heavenly harmony issuing from within, and he felt more and more desirous to be admitted. He paused and thought; then, putting his ear as close as possible, "My Lord St. Peter," said he, "what admirable harmony you have in there! If you would only set the door ajar, I might at least hear and enjoy it."

St. Peter was kind-hearted, so he did as he was asked; and instantly St. Christopher threw in his sack, and sprang in after it. "At home, at last," said he, "and you can't turn me out." St. Peter conceded he was right, so he has since remained in heaven, and we must acknowledge he well deserved so comfortable an abode.

[Supplement to the article on "The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City" in our July number.]

The Sanitary And Moral Condition Of New York City.

The letter which is published below is an evidence that our July correspondent's observations on the neglected condition of a great number of children in New York struck a telling blow in the right direction, and has called forth one response of the right kind, which, we trust, will not be the only one. A number of our good friends have shown themselves to be somewhat hurt by the remarks made in the article alluded to, on the efforts of certain Protestant institutions among the vagrant children of this city. The article was not written for the purpose of showing what the small number of zealous Catholics—who are alive to the duty and necessity of rescuing this unfortunate class of our own children—are doing, but of working up the whole Catholic community to an active co-operation with these pioneers of charity, in undertaking that which they are not doing, and cannot do, while they are so feebly sustained. One principal motive for doing this is, the fact that sectarian philanthropists are forestalling us in the work we ought to have attended to long ago, and drawing away from the fold of the church the lambs we have neglected to take care of. Every one knows, none better than the leaders of every Protestant sect themselves, that they have no more determined adversaries than we are in their aggressions on the Catholic religion. At the same time, we do not feel called upon to deny them all humane and philanthropic motives, or to denounce them as actuated by mere hatred against the Catholic religion. They do an irreparable mischief to the unfortunate children whom they draw away from the fold of the church; yet, we are willing to believe they do it ignorantly, and with an intention of doing them good. So far as their efforts among the young unbaptized heathen of New York are concerned, they can undoubtedly effect something in reclaiming them from the wretched condition in which they are. We desire to confine them to that sphere, and wish them a fair field to compete with us in, and to show what they are able to accomplish. We hope, as the result of all philanthropic efforts for the relief of the degraded classes made by all kinds of institutions, and by individuals of all kinds of theoretical opinions, that the superiority of the Catholic Church, and its necessity to our moral and social well-being, will be demonstrated. We must demonstrate it, however, by action, and not by mere argument. We must show practically that we are able to master and subdue the elements of vice and misery that rage over the turbulent sea of this vast population. In a former volume of our magazine, we did full justice to the work which the Catholic Church has accomplished, and is still carrying on among our own people in this city, in an article entitled "Religion in New York." The article in our last number may appear to have too much overlooked the statistics there given respecting the care of Catholic children. The statement of the whole number of children in the city was inadvertently cited from Dr. Harris as being the number of vagrants, although the correct number (40,000) was given in several other places. Another quotation from a Protestant source, which was cited for the purpose of showing the small proportion of children in Protestant Sunday-schools, contains a statement that 125,000 children are without instruction, which also inadvertently passed uncorrected. The 60,000 children in Catholic Sunday-schools, and, we suppose, also the Jewish children, as well as those who are privately taught at home, ought to have been deducted. There are said to be 95,000 children in Protestant Sunday-schools. The whole number of children is estimated at 200,000. There is, then, a vague neutral ground between vagrancy and the Sunday-school domain, occupied by some thousands, more or less—how many, we cannot correctly estimate. We are immediately concerned only with Catholic children. It is not possible to figure up precisely the numbers, every day increasing, of these children, in every stage of neglected moral and religious education down to the most complete vagrancy. We know, however, that they are to be counted by thousands, and would be sufficient by themselves to people a respectable Southern or Western diocese. We know that comparatively nothing is doing to reclaim them; and as for any further practical remarks as to what ought to be done, we give place for the present to the writer of the letter which follows, who is sorry for these poor children one thousand dollars. We trust that her good example will be followed by others, and shall be happy to receive in trust whatever may be contributed toward the establishment of an institution such as she recommends, and of which the Sisters of Charity are ready to assume the charge whenever the requisite funds are provided.—Ed. C. W.

"Rev. and Dear Father Hecker: "The article in The Catholic World, for July, on 'The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City,' has excited in my mind the greatest interest, and, I may add, self-condemnation.

"It is true I knew the facts mentioned there before, but never were they so fully brought home to me as in reading that article. I could say nothing but 'Mea culpa, mea culpa.'

Yes, through my fault, and the fault of every Catholic, these many thousands of little children are left uncared for; except, indeed, by those who have been more zealous to spread error, uncertainty, and darkness than we to give them the true bread of life. Are we indeed the children of the church? Have we ever listened to these words of our Saviour, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto these my little ones, ye have not done it unto me'? God forgive us, and grant that every Catholic, in reading that article, may be moved to a true contrition.

"Why cannot the several hundred thousand Catholics in our great city establish a Central Mission House for these little neglected ones of the flock? For, of these forty thousand vagrant and uncared-for children, we cannot doubt that far more than one half have inherited the Catholic faith. The burden of supporting this great work of charity should not be borne by one parish or section of the city, and that the least able to bear it; but every parish should feel as if this house demanded its own especial care. And not only every parish in New York City, but throughout the arch-diocese and the whole country; for, as the poverty of the Old World finds its first refuge in our city, so the charity of the New World should be concentrated here to meet it.

"Father Farrelly is doing a noble work. God bless him for it! And as to the Reformatory established by Dr. Ives, only God can know the good it has already done and is yet to do. Catholics are not accustomed to speak much of what they do, but we who have done little or nothing cannot shelter ourselves behind those who, alone and single-handed as it were, have tried to meet this torrent of poverty and crime. As an act of reparation on my part for past neglect, I place in your hands a check for one thousand dollars, ($1000,) as a beginning of this noble work. The Sisters of Charity or Mercy will surely be ready to take charge of such a house, for where will they find so true a work of charity or mercy?

"I beg of you, reverend father, to publish this in your magazine; for I do not doubt that God has touched other hearts, and that this little beginning, when known, will grow like a grain of mustard-seed, and become a great and noble work.

"Yours, etc.,
......"

New Publications

Problems of the Age: With Studies in St. Augustine on Kindred Topics.
By the Rev. Augustine F. Hewit, of the Congregation of St. Paul.
New York: Catholic Publication House. 1868.

This volume, being chiefly a republication of some of our own articles, cannot, of course, receive from us an independent and impartial criticism. We can only state its scope and design, leaving it to other critics to judge of its merits. The topics which it discusses relate to the dialectic unity of the natural and supernatural in the universal order of truth and being. It is intended to meet the intellectual difficulties of those who cannot see this dialectic unity, and who, therefore, apprehend a contradiction between the natural and the supernatural, or, at least, a chasm between the two, which makes it impossible to explain their relation to each other on rational principles. It is more especially adapted to that class of persons who are rather perplexed by an apparent contradiction between reason and faith, than to those who are either positive infidels or positive sceptics. There are many such persons, predisposed to admit a spiritual philosophy and the truth of Christianity, but still in a state of doubt respecting both philosophical and revealed truths. The reason of this is, because the current philosophy of Protestantism is shallow and sophistical, and the current theology of Protestantism irrational. It is necessary, therefore, to present a sound philosophy as a cure for intellectual scepticism, and a sound rational theology as a cure for religious doubt. The Problems of the Age is a contribution to this work. It is neither a system of philosophy nor of theology, but rather a clue to find both the one and the other. It proposes to the man bewildered in the labyrinth of scepticism a path which will lead him out into the open day of certitude, and leaves it to him to try the path or himself, and ascertain by his own examination whether it be the right one. Protestantism first destroyed theology, and then philosophy. Rationalism has tried to reconstruct both; but, having only the débris to use as a material, and no formula to work by, has failed signally. The author of the volume before us has endeavored to derive a formula from the works of the best Catholic philosophers and theologians which gives the principles of construction, to present an outline of the plan according to which all true builders always have been working, and always must work, in the rearing of that temple whose porch is science and whose sanctuary is faith. The first principles of reason and the first principles of faith are presupposed as given. The existence and the attributes of God are briefly demonstrated from the first principles of reason, as the basis of faith in revealed truths. The connection between rational knowledge and supernatural faith is exhibited, and the point of transition from one to the other designated. The principal mysteries of revelation are then taken up, and their dialectic relation to the great truths of natural theology, respecting God as the first and final cause of the creation, is pointed out. As the perversions of Calvinism represent some of these mysterious doctrines in such a way that they are irreconcilable with natural theology, a considerable space is devoted to the clearing away of these misconceptions. The principal philosophical difficulties in the way of apprehending certain doctrines are also noticed, and a solution given. The topics most thoroughly treated are those which relate to the supernatural destiny of man, his primitive condition, the fall, original sin, and the final consummation of all things, including the redemption of the human race through the Incarnation.

The Studies in St. Augustine is a subsidiary essay intended to refute the allegation that the Calvinistic doctrines have been justly deduced from his writings and the authoritative teaching of the church in his time. In doing this, the evidence is clearly presented of the fact that several of the chief distinctive doctrines of the Catholic Church were held by the whole church at the time when the great doctor flourished. It is also shown that modern Catholic theology, although far more precise and definite in many points than the ancient theology could be, is the only true and legitimate offspring and development of its principles. The drift of the whole book in both its parts is to present a clear conception of what the Catholic doctrine is, and to show that this conception is in harmony with the rational principles on which a spiritual and theistic philosophy must base itself. It is adapted, therefore, to stimulate thought and awaken an appetite for truth, much more than to satisfy the mind. Those who are influenced by its arguments must desire a more thorough exposition both of the principles of reason and of those of faith, in order to perceive more clearly the objective truth, both of philosophy and of revelation, unless they are already well-informed on both points. The first branch of science has been handled in the most satisfactory and thorough manner in the philosophical articles of Dr. Brownson's Review. There are also some able articles on the same topics to be found in The Catholic World. It is much to be regretted that these articles are not to be had in a separate volume, so as to be easily accessible, and that there is no complete treatise on philosophy, which is sufficient to meet the wants of our day, written in the English language. The second branch of science, which embraces the evidence of the positive truth of revelation, has been more extensively cultivated. The shortest and most satisfactory way to a conclusion on that point is, to take up at once the proof of the divine institution and authority of the Catholic Church. Two things only are necessary to be proved: First, there is a God; second, God reveals his truth and law through the Catholic Church. It ought not to require a very long time, or a very difficult process, to establish these two truths in any mind not prepossessed by error and prejudice. Those who are unfortunately so prepossessed have no other choice but to work their way out the best way they can, and every one who lends them a helping hand does a great service to his fellow-men.

Parochial and Plain Sermons.
By John Henry Newman, B.D., formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford.
In eight volumes. Vol. I. New edition.
Rivingtons, London, Oxford, and Cambridge.
For sale at The Catholic Publication House, New York. 1868.

Truly Anglicanism is a unique phenomenon, or, rather, congeries of phenomena, and of its phases there is no end. Its newspapers in this country are rather remarkable for virulent hostility to the Catholic Church, and offensive language about Catholic persons and things. Only the other day, the Hartford Churchman, which professes to be decent, gave currency to the shameless report that the late unfortunate Cardinal d'Andrea was poisoned. The language used about Dr. Newman has been frequently vituperative and insolent in the extreme. The English High Churchmen are usually far more gentlemanly than their American confrères, and their tone and language are often far more decorous when they speak of Catholic affairs. Even in England, however, as well as in this country, a smattering of Catholicism very frequently produces an increase of animosity and bitterness against the Catholic Church. The more nearly some approach her, the more they become inflamed, like comets approaching the sun, and the attraction is suddenly turned into a repulsive force, which drives them back into the dreariness of space. There are some, however, in England, among those who cling to the Established Church, whose spirit is kind and loving toward those whom they would fain regard as their fellow-Catholics, even though these are converts from Anglicanism. A remarkable proof that the number of these is considerable is found in the fact that a new edition of Dr. Newman's Sermons is announced by the Rivingtons, and that the first volume has already issued from the press, with a preface by the Rev. W. J. Copeland, rector of Farnham. The typographical execution of the volume is extremely beautiful. The preface is sad and tender, like the hymn of a captive Israelite in Babylon. Dr. Newman has, we believe, consented to this republication. We remember well the delight and instruction we received from these Sermons when they were first republished in this country, and the pleasure we experienced in visiting, a few months ago, the church of St. Mary the Virgin, at Oxford, where they were preached. We are not able to say whether they contain anything un-Catholic or not; if so, it cannot be sufficient to be in any way dangerous, or to detract from their generally Catholic doctrine and spirit. The editor says that their author is not to be considered as reasserting all their sentiments, and that he would undoubtedly wish some parts of them altered or omitted. They are models of the most perfect English style, and, as such, of great value to Catholic preachers. Their circulation among Protestants to as great an extent as possible is something most devoutly to be wished, and likely to do an extraordinary amount of good. No doubt the Protestant clergy here, whatever may be the case in England, will discourage their being read; yet the younger clergy of all denominations will undoubtedly read them themselves, and will not be able to hinder great numbers of the most cultivated among the laity from doing the same. They are wonderful compositions, the like of which our language does not contain; and those who are not already familiar with them will deprive themselves of a very great pleasure if they do not avail themselves of the opportunity of becoming so. We feel extremely obliged to the editor and publishers for sending out this new and beautiful edition, and we hope its influence may be to draw the hearts of our Protestant friends and brethren nearer to us. We are extremely anxious that the violent and hostile controversy between us should cease, and that we might have the opportunity of discussing with them, in a calm and quiet way, the points of difference which separate them from ourselves. While their tone and manner are so discourteous and unfair, this is impossible; and we hope they may learn a lesson from Mr. Copeland, and others among themselves who are of like spirit with him, as well as from the ci-devant Vicar of St. Mary's, who is revived once more in his surplice and hood, to preach again among his former people, as the prophet of the ten lost tribes.

Appleton's Short Trip to Europe. (1868.)
Principally devoted to England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy; with Glimpses of Spain, Short Routes in the East, etc.; and a Collection of Travellers' Phrases in French and German.
By Henry Morford, Author of "Over Sea," "Paris in '67," etc., etc.
New York: Appletons.

This is a very pretty, convenient, and useful hand-book for travellers, full of useful advice and valuable directions, which we can cordially recommend to every person about to make a tour to Europe for the first time, as the best book of the kind we are acquainted with. There are some allusions and remarks scattered through the book which seem intended to enliven it and give it a flavor of humor, and which will doubtless please a certain number of its readers. Others, however, may perhaps think they detract from the general good taste evinced by the author, when he confines himself to a more quiet and simple style of giving information.

Sidney Smith's coarse pun on the name of St. Peter, and the author's own very dull attempt at wit in regard to the relics of the martyrs in the church of St. Ursula, at Cologne, will not render the book any the more agreeable to Catholic tourists, and we should think not to any persons of refined taste. The allusions made occasionally to the supposed vicious propensities of a certain class of tourists are still more objectionable. They are like whispering behind the hand, or exchanging nods and winks, in good company. The guidebooks of Paris are models of the most perfect taste and elegance in style, and so are those of Baedeker, for the continent, with the exception of an occasional falsehood or sneer about something Catholic. In our judgment, these are the proper models to imitate.

We cannot omit remarking, while we are on the subject of guide-books, that it would be a work of great service to Catholic tourists, if some competent person would prepare a guide-book for their use, with reference to all the places and objects specially interesting to them as connected with their religion and its history.

Rhymes of the Poets.
By Felix Ago.
Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1868.

A very amusing satirical essay upon "allowable rhymes," selected from the verses of a large number of poets.

Lake George: Its Scenes and Characteristics, with Glimpses of the Olden Times; to which is added some account of Ticonderoga; with a description of the route to Schroon Lake and the Adirondacks. With Illustrations.
By B. F. De Costa,
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 196.
New York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1868.

This is an excellent little book for tourists to Lake George and the surrounding country. The first white man who saw Lake George was the Jesuit missionary, Father Jogues, who, having arrived at that beautiful lake on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi, called it "The Lake of the Blessed Sacrament," a name it retained until changed by the English to its present one. The author takes pains to correct the many misstatements of other writers with regard to historical events which occurred in the vicinity of the lake. The account of the defeat of the English by Montcalm, 1757, is given; and the reported connivance of that general in the massacre of the English troops after their surrender is disposed of as one of the "wild exaggerations of the day." Yet it is only a few years ago that a distinguished general, while on a visit to the lake, reiterated, in a speech to his admirers, the terrible cruelty of the French in allowing the captives to be massacred in cold blood, and asserted that it was one of the customs of that barbarous age, and therefore was not prevented by Montcalm. Mr. De Costa says, with reference to this reported massacre: "That class of writers who furnish what may be called apocrypha of history, have delighted in wild exaggerations of this event. Drawing their material from the crudest sensation accounts of the day, they have not hesitated to record as facts the most improbable fancies. It is to be regretted that these accounts have crept into so many of our popular school histories, in one of which, now extensively used, we are informed that, when Montcalm went away, he left the dead bodies of one hundred women shockingly mangled and weltering in their blood. The account is based upon a supposed letter of Putnam's that was never written, and is of the same authority as that favorite but now exploded story of the school-boy, which relates Putnam's descent into the wolfs den." He also truly says that "national enmity has had much to do with these misrepresentations of Montcalm, who was every way a noble and humane man, as well as the ablest general of his day in all North America." Religious animosity had its share in it, too, and no small share either. The French were Catholics; the English, Protestants; and it was only in perfect keeping with the English literature of the day to paint everything done by the French Catholics in the darkest colors possible. But this calumny cannot stand the tests of the critic of to-day, and we are glad to see a little hand-book like this, which must become popular with the tourist of the Northern lakes, stamp the fictions which have crept into history as they deserve, and give its readers the truth.

The work is printed on good paper, and illustrated with wood-cuts of the most noted places referred to in its pages.

Democracy in the United States:
What it has Done, What it is Doing, and What it will Do.
By Ransom H. Gillett, formerly Member of Congress from St. Lawrence County, N.Y.; more recently Registrar and Solicitor of the United States Treasury Department, and Solicitor for the United States in the Court of Claims, etc.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.

This is what, we suppose, will be termed, in the language of the market, a seasonable book, it being brought out just in time for, and adapted to, the political campaign upon which the country has now fully entered. It aims to give a succinct but complete history of the Democratic party, of its measures and its leading men, from its beginning down to the present time. We are not ourselves politicians enough to judge how faithfully or reliably this has been done. The volume—a compact one of some four hundred pages—is brought out in the Messrs. Appleton's excellent style of book publishing, and will, of course, have an extensive sale.

Histoire De France.
Par V. Duruy.
Nouvelle Edition, illustrée d'un grand nombre de gravures et de cartes geographiques.
Paris: Hachette. (New York: Christern. 2 vols. 12mo.)

This is a part of a course of compendious universal history prepared by a number of learned writers, under the direction of M. Duruy. It is a clear and succinct history of France from the earliest epoch to the year 1815, with an appendix containing a summary of events from 1815 to 1866. The history of France is of the greatest interest and importance, and but little known among us, especially in its Catholic aspects. This book is, therefore, one of the most useful text-books for the instruction of classes studying the French language, which can be studied; and most invaluable also for others, who are able to read French, and who desire to have a brief but complete exposition of French history.

Besides its numerous and valuable maps, it contains more than 300 remarkably well-executed and artistic woodcuts, which add very much to its value and interest. The study of the French language and literature has been too much neglected in our American colleges and higher schools. Every person of liberal education ought to read and speak the French language. We recommend this book to the attention of teachers, parents, and all persons occupied with the study of French, and also to intelligent tourists, to whom it will prove an invaluable companion on a visit to La Belle France.

O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library.
First series. 12 vols. Beautifully illustrated.
New York: P. O'Shea. 1868.

The titles of the volumes in this series are as follows:

The Inquisitive Boy and the Little Ragman;
The Picture and the Country Cousins;
Augusta and Christmas Eve;
The Young Guests, and other stories;
The Page, and other stories;
The Young Artist;
The Gray Woman of Scharfenstein, and other stories;
The Young Painter;
Tailor and Fiddler;
Sobieski's Achievements;
Hedwig of Poland;
The Young Countess.

These tales are taken principally from the German and French, and are unexceptional in matter.

The Catholic Crusoe.
Adventures of Owen Evans, Esq., Surgeon's Mate, set ashore with five companions on a desolate island in the Caribbean Sea, 1739. Given from the Original MSS.,
by Rev. W. H. Anderdon, M.A.
New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 12mo, pp. 519.

A notice of Dr. Anderdon's very entertaining story appeared in The Catholic World for December, 1867. The reprint before us is very well got up, but lacks an interesting feature of the original edition, namely, its maps and illustrations.

The Queen's Daughter; or, The Orphan of La Granja.
By the author of Grace Morton, etc.
Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. Pp. 108.

A pleasant tale for young folk, neatly bound, and, in general typographical execution, a very decided improvement on its predecessor, Elinor Johnstone.

The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, with a Memoir of his Life.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.

So far as the paper and binding are concerned, this edition of Campbell is beautifully got up; but we cannot say as much for the type, which is the very reverse of beautiful.

A Popular Treatise on the Art of House Painting, Plain and Decorative.
By John W. Masury. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

A very useful book, on an important subject, for those who would preserve their houses, and have them tastefully and, at the same time, economically painted. The mechanical portion of the work is executed in the Messrs. Appleton's best style.

Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna.
By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D.
Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1868.

This is an American edition of Dr. Northcote's work, the English edition of which we noticed in our July number. It is brought out in very handsome style, and reflects credit on the taste of the publisher.

Announcements.—"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press, or in preparation, the following new works:

1. Symbolism. By Adam Moehler. This will be ready about August 1st.
2. Second Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library. Ready about September 1st, twelve vols., for titles of which see advertisement on second page of cover.
3. Memorials of those who suffered for the Catholic Faith in Ireland, in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries. Collected and edited from the original authorities, by Myles O'Rielly. B.A., LL.D. This will be one of the most important books relative to Ireland ever published in this country. It will be ready about September 1st.
4. Cradle Lands—Egypt, Palestine, etc. Illustrated. By Lady Herbert. Ready November 15.
5. Love; or, Self-Sacrifice. By Lady Herbert.
6. Life of Father Ravigan, S.J.
7. Third Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library.

Books Received.

From P. Donahoe, Boston.

Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-day. From the French of Mgr. Segur. 1 vol. 32mo, pp. 253. Price, 60 cents.

From J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.

Alleghania; or, Praises of American Heroes.
By Christopher Laomedon Pindar.

The Catholic World.
Vol. VII., No. 42.—September, 1868.

The Veneration Of Saints And Holy Images.

The veneration paid to saints by Catholics with the formal approbation or tacit sanction of the supreme authority in the church is, together with the use made of their images and that of Christ in religious worship, under the same sanction, the one feature of the Catholic system most obnoxious to Protestants. They do not hesitate ordinarily to qualify it as idolatry, that is, as a rendering of the worship due to God alone to creatures, both living and inanimate, similar to that which the heathen system of polytheism ascribes to its numerous divinities and their images.

We propose to discuss this matter briefly, not with the intention of proving that the Catholic doctrine and practice are truly a genuine outgrowth of the Christian religion by extrinsic evidence, but of showing their intrinsic harmony with Christian first principles, and refuting the objections derived from these first principles against them. As the subject naturally divides itself into two distinct parts, already clearly indicated in our opening paragraph, we shall confine our remarks at present to the first part of it, or that relating to the veneration of saints.

The preliminary charge of idolatry, or a direct contradiction to the monotheistic doctrine of natural and revealed theology, is perfectly groundless, and, however it may be modified and diminished, there is not an atom of truth in it upon which any objection to the Catholic doctrine can be based.

Idolatry, or the worship of the creature instead of the creator, originates in ignorance or denial of the true conception of the one living and true God. God is not worshipped, because he is not known or believed in. By necessary consequence, something which is not God is conceived as highest, best, most excellent, most powerful, without reference or relation to God as the author and sovereign of all that has any existence. The pantheist is an idolater of all nature, but especially of himself. Even Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not free from idolatrous principles, although probably free from all sin in the matter, since they ascribed to the universe a certain amount of being not caused by the intelligence and will of God as creator. Neither are our modern rationalists free from the same error, since they withhold from God the homage of their reason, and give it to themselves as to persons possessing intelligence which is independent of God. Wilful and obstinate heretics are all likewise in the same category; for, by rejecting a part of what God has revealed, they, by implication, profess to be superior to God in intelligence, and substitute an idol of their own vain imagination in lieu of that eternal truth which is identical with the essence of God. Idolaters, in the strict sense of the word, or polytheists, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans were, paid a formal worship to their gods, as superior beings having a supreme and irresponsible control over nature and over men. It was a worship which was a substitute for that originally given to the true God, totally contrary to it, and an insuperable barrier to the spread of monotheism as a religion. These false divinities were, therefore, the rivals of the true God, and filled the place in the religious worship of the heathen which was filled by him in the worship established by divine revelation from the creation of mankind. It is evident, from the very statement of what idolatry is in itself, that a veneration paid to any creature, which is proportionate to the degree of excellence which it has received from the creator, is not idolatrous, and cannot detract from the supreme veneration which is due to God as the sovereign lord of the universe. Those who condemn the religious honor paid to created natures by the Catholic Church cannot therefore lay down an a priori principle from which to demonstrate in advance that this honor is necessarily idolatrous, unless they previously demonstrate that the excellence ascribed to these natures is such that God cannot communicate it to a creature. The worship paid to the sacred humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ is that which is apparently the most obnoxious to the charge of idolatry of any other species of relative worship which the church has decreed to be due to any created nature. Our chief controversy is, therefore, with Jews, Mohammedans, Unitarians, and others who claim to be pure theists and who deny the incarnation. What we affirm against these is, that they cannot demonstrate the impossibility of the incarnation. They cannot demonstrate the impossibility of a hypostatic union between the human nature and the divine nature, by virtue of which the personality of the human nature is divine, and the human nature is the nature of God, and thus worthy of relative adoration. Therefore, they cannot argue that the divinity of Jesus Christ has not been revealed, and that divine worship is not due to him by the law of God, because God cannot reveal such a doctrine or command such a worship without contradicting the essential truth of his nature. Suppose that evidence is given sufficient in itself to authenticate the revelation of the mystery of the incarnation, and at once it becomes evident that divine worship is due to Jesus Christ as God incarnate, precisely because worship is due to God. The question is then only debatable on the point whether this revelation has been made or not. If it could be proved that it has not, and that Jesus Christ is a created and finite person, it would follow that the worship paid to him by all orthodox Christians is idolatrous. It would be idolatrous to worship any man who should pretend to be God incarnate when he is not, or who should be erroneously believed by his disciples to be a divine person, without any reference to the question whether any such incarnation can be or has been decreed by the wisdom of God. We are not attempting to prove the truth of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, or to prove directly that the worship we pay to him is not idolatrous. Everything, we admit, depends on proving it. If it cannot be proved, Christianity is a superstition, and must be classed with Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. For the proof of the truth and reality of the incarnation, we must refer the reader elsewhere. We are intent on showing that no elevation of created nature which is possible is in any way incompatible with the supreme dignity and sovereignty of God, and, consequently, no honor due to such an elevated nature incompatible with the supreme worship due to the divine majesty. We are also intent on showing that it is principally the fact of the incarnation on which the whole question hinges, and the worship paid to Christ against which the objections of so-called theists to saint-worship are levelled. The incarnation is the principle of saint-worship. All orthodox Protestants are accused of idolatrous saint-worship by Unitarians, Jews, Mohammedans, and all pure theists. It is true that the orthodox do not regard Jesus Christ as a mere saint, but all others regard him as being, at the highest, only the greatest among the saints. All Protestants who are orthodox on the incarnation, and conformed in belief to the doctrine of their own confessions and great divines, believe that the holy humanity of Jesus Christ is entitled to divine worship. They are obliged to worship not only the divine nature of Jesus Christ, but also his human nature, his soul and body. Yet, the human nature of Christ is a created and finite substance, not possessing a single divine attribute. How, then, can it receive the worship due to God alone? Evidently it cannot receive such a worship as terminating in itself, or as absolute. It is impossible for the intellect to make the judgment that the substance of the body and of the soul of Jesus Christ is the infinite, self-existing being whom we call God, and from whom all things derive existence. Why, then, is the humanity of Jesus Christ to be worshipped? Because of the divine person to whom it belongs. The soul and the body of Jesus Christ are the soul and body of the Son of God. The same person who is God is also man, and his humanity is inseparable from his person. It is, therefore, on account of and in relation to his divine person that his human nature is adored with the worship of latria. If our Lord should condescend to come upon the earth again, we are persuaded that every sincere Protestant who believes in his divinity would gladly prostrate himself at his feet to pay him supreme adoration, and, if he were able to look upon his face, would feel that he was gazing upon the very countenance of God, and that the eyes of the Lord of heaven and earth were fixed upon him. If there are any whose mind or feelings revolt from the worship of the Son of God in his human body and through the medium of his visible form, let them admit at once that they are no believers in the incarnation, that they have abandoned the doctrine of the ancient Protestant confessions and are really Unitarians. Those who fully admit the Catholic doctrine that the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ is to be adored must range themselves at once on our side and prepare to defend our common cause. They must defend themselves and us against the charge of idolatry. They cannot do it without laying down the principle that, when a created nature is elevated to a special union with the divine nature, and made to participate with it in dignity, it is worthy of a proportionate religious veneration. The more orthodox Unitarians cannot deny this principle without condemning themselves. They give a veneration at least equal to that which Catholics call the worship of hyperdulia to Jesus Christ; and as they do not acknowledge in him any dignity differing in kind, but only one differing in degree, from that of angels, prophets, martyrs, confessors, and other saints, they cannot consistently deny the propriety of giving a lesser veneration, or worship of dulia, to the saints. Episcopalians and other Protestants dedicate days and churches in honor of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, which are acts of very high religious veneration. Only those who refuse all religious veneration either to Jesus Christ or to any created nature, because they deny any supernatural elevation of created nature into a mysterious union with the divine nature, have any pretext or appearance of consistency in their charge of idolatry against Catholic saint-worship. Yet it is precisely the trinitarian Protestants who are loudest and most violent in repeating this charge. So far as rationalists and Unitarians are concerned, it is not of much utility to discuss the question of the veneration of the Virgin and of the saints directly. The preliminary question of the incarnation has first to be settled. It is the divine worship we pay to Jesus Christ which is their great stone of stumbling and rock of offence. We leave them aside, therefore, to pursue the one direct line of argument on which we started, namely, that the veneration of saints flows logically out of the worship of the sacred humanity of Christ; and is rooted in the doctrine of the incarnation.

Orthodox Protestants are bound to pay divine worship, or the adoration of latria, to the soul and body of Jesus Christ; a worship which would be idolatry if the humanity of Christ were not united to the divine nature in one personality, so that the worship of Christ as man is necessarily referred to his divine person and terminates upon it. For the same reason, they are bound to pay an inferior veneration, or worship of dulia, to the saints, because they also are united to the divine nature through the incarnation and in Christ, as his co-heirs and brethren, the participators of his glory. They are not united with the divine nature in one personality, therefore they cannot receive divine worship. But they are in a lesser mode made "partakers of the divine nature," as the Scripture explicitly declares, and, therefore, deserve a veneration commensurate with their degree of union, which is ultimately referred to God, who is "worshipped in his saints." To compare the veneration of the saints of God with the Greek polytheism is simply absurd. It is connected with and springs out of the doctrine of pure monotheism and the worship paid to the one true God. It does not, in the slightest degree, supplant this doctrine or worship, confuse the idea of God, or interfere with the recognition of his sole and absolute sovereignty. It presents necessarily, and by its very essence, the saints as the creatures, the servants, the courtiers, ministers, and favored friends of God, intercessors and advocates for men before his throne. It presents, therefore, necessarily, God as their creator, sovereign, and as the source and fountain of all their sanctity, beatitude, and glory, the author and giver of all the blessings asked for through their intercession. The perpetual presence of the true idea of God preserves the idea of the hierarchy of creatures from all corruption or perversion, and keeps continually before the mind their relation and subordination to the supreme and absolute Lord of the universe.

In the same way, the presence of the true idea of the incarnation prevents the idea of the mediation of the saints between God and man from being corrupted. It is impossible for the Blessed Virgin or any other saint to take the place in the Catholic idea which belongs to Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, the Mediator between God and man. It is clearly understood and vividly realized that Jesus Christ is the medium of union between God and man through the hypostatic union of human nature with the divine nature in his person. His expiation of sin derives its infinite value from the divinity of his person. His merits derive their infinite value also from his divinity. He is the source and fountain of grace and mercy, because he is God and possesses life in himself. He is the sacrifice perpetually offered in the divine eucharist, the perennial source of life from which the soul is fed in the holy communion. The mediation of the saints is derived from him, subordinate to and dependent on his mediation. The Blessed Virgin and the saints are honored on account of their relation to him, and are invoked as his agents and ministers in dispensing grace. It is impossible, therefore, to attribute to them any separate merit or independent power; and, so far from the devotion to Our Lady or the saints impeding the view of Christ, it only brings him into bolder relief, and by contrast and comparison enhances the conception of his infinite elevation, as their and our creator and sovereign, above all creatures even the most exalted. Dr. Johnson with his usual strong good sense, saw this, and with his usual manly honesty avowed it, as every one knows who has read his Life by Boswell. Intelligent Protestants ought to be ashamed of themselves for perpetually reiterating the stupid charge against the Catholic Church, that she substitutes the Virgin and the saints as objects of worship in the place of God, or as objects of confidence in the place of our Saviour Christ. The only excuse for those who make this assertion is invincible ignorance, an excuse not very creditable to men who profess to be theologians. It may avail for those who have grown too old to make any new studies or receive any new ideas, and for those whose intelligence and learning are so circumscribed that they cannot become acquainted with or understand the arguments of Catholic theologians. But for those who have the obligation and the opportunity to study and understand these grave questions, but yet persist, either through culpable ignorance or wilful dishonesty, in misrepresenting Catholic doctrine, there can be no excuse. In spite of our desire to stretch charity to its utmost limits, we cannot help thinking that they are afraid to meet the question openly and fairly, afraid to investigate, and afraid to discuss the issue between us on its real merits. They apprehend, more or less vaguely or distinctly, that they cannot maintain their ground if they state the Catholic doctrines fairly and argue against them as they really are. Their instinct of self-preservation teaches them that their only safety consists in the smoke which they create by their incessant fusillade of misrepresentation, and which hides the true aspect of the field from their deluded followers.

We leave this part of our subject with a reiteration of what we have already affirmed and proved. The attempt to prove a priori from the idea of God, or from the idea of the incarnation and mediation of the Word made man, that the religious veneration of the saints is incompatible with the supreme worship due to God, and the supreme confidence we are bound to repose in the merits and grace of the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ, is perfectly futile. The only real question is one of evidence: whether the Catholic Church can furnish evidence of her divine authority to teach that the Blessed Virgin and the saints have received a subordinate office of mediation, and are to be honored and invoked by a special and formal cultus. If the evidence which is proposed can be refuted, the worship of the saints may be qualified as a vain observance, a superstition, a useless addition to Christianity. But it can never, with any reason, be denominated idolatry; because it distinctly limits itself to that veneration which is simply commensurate with a merely created and derived dignity, leaving intact and perfect the supreme worship of God. It can never be denominated a substitution of many saviours and mediators in place of the one Saviour and Mediator Jesus Christ; because it leaves the doctrine of his mediation intact and perfect. That this evidence can be demolished by sound historical learning, scientific exegesis of the Scriptures, or solid theological arguments, we have no fear. We do not think our antagonists have much hope of doing it. They have already said all that can be said on their side, and only damaged their own cause by it. They cannot get rid of the universal testimony of all ages and countries to the Catholic doctrine, without resorting to principles which subvert their own foundation and leave them to sink down into the pit that has swallowed up Rénan and Colenso. These topics have been exhaustively handled by numerous and able Catholic writers, to whom we refer those readers who wish to investigate them. We turn now to the second part of our subject, which relates to the honor paid to the sacred images of Christ and the saints.

Anticatholic writers are so illogical, careless, and confused in their arguments against Catholic doctrines and practices, and use so much rhetoric, directed merely ad captandum vulgus, especially when they take up this, which is one of their favorite themes, that it is very difficult to follow and refute them in a clear and methodical manner. They deal very much in assertions and vituperative expressions, in misrepresentations, ridicule, and low attempts at wit, in unmeaning laudations of themselves as the only enlightened and spiritual persons in the world, and wholesale depreciation of Catholics, especially the simple and pious peasantry and common people of Catholic countries. We suppose that the substance of their objections against the veneration of images, extracted and reduced to a clear and precise statement, would be something like this: The use made of images in religious worship by Catholics is idolatrous, because it either is actually an adoration of images as gods in place of the true God, or, if not, leads to and encourages such a worship, and bears the outward appearance of being identical with it. It is, therefore, to be condemned, as intrinsically dangerous in itself, and therefore prohibited under the old law, and as in many cases among the uneducated grossly superstitious and heathenish. It is, therefore, on a par with the idolatry of the Greeks and Romans, and other pagan nations, which is so severely denounced in the Holy Scriptures, and so unmercifully ridiculed by the early Christian writers; although enlightened Catholics, like enlightened pagans, may be free from the grossness of the vulgar superstition.

A full discussion of the subject would require us to go into the question of the nature of image-worship among the heathen nations. This has been done already by Bishop England, who has handled the whole matter with great learning and ability in his "Letters to the Gospel Messenger." It has also been briefly but satisfactorily treated in an article on "Is it Honest?" in a former number of this magazine. We may assert it as a certain and established fact, that the heathen priests and other intelligent advocates of polytheism held the opinion, so far as they were sincere believers in their own system, that the divinities whom they worshipped were in some way bound to their images, and acted through them as the soul acts through the body. They did not, of course, worship the metal or wood of which the images were composed; but they did worship the images themselves, as being animated statues informed by a divine virtue, and really containing the persons they represented. Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and others, and persons who were imbued with the principles of the more sound and monotheistic philosophy, were not idolaters in the strict and gross sense. They regarded the divinities of the popular mythology as only a sort of genii, and probably considered their images as only representations intended to impress the senses and keep alive the belief and devotion of the people. But the doctrine of polytheism was not the doctrine of the sounder and higher philosophy. The system was idolatrous, both in its substitution of imaginary beings for the one, true God, and also in its offering of the worship due to God to images as containing their imaginary divinities. It is necessary to take into account, in estimating the idolatrous character of this heathen worship, not only that it terminated upon objects which were not divine as the ultimate end of the homage given, without reference to the supreme creator and lord, but also that these objects were unreal and imaginary beings. It was not, therefore, merely an undue exaltation of the creature, but a substitution of mere creations of the imagination in lieu of the true God. It was, therefore, not only polytheism, or a denial of the unity of God, and a division of the deity among many beings possessing divine attributes, but idol-worship, that is, the worship of nonentities in place of the real, infinite Being. The image represented nothing real. It was worshipped as related to an imaginary divinity, supposed to reside in it and to communicate to it a certain divine quality. There being no such person really existing, the image was a mere idol; and the worship had no real object to terminate upon except the material of which it was composed. A man who cherishes and honors the picture of his wife has a real and legitimate object upon which the affections and emotions awakened by the picture may terminate; but an artist who falls in love with a picture painted after an imaginary ideal in his own mind loves a mere painted form, an idol, and is, therefore, guilty of an absurd form of picture-worship. If this love takes the place of the love of God in his soul and leads him to place his supreme good in this imaginary being, he is an idolater. The heathen had nothing in their idols but lumps of wood, stone, or metal, fashioned to represent some imaginary being. They were therefore open to all the ridicule and scorn of the prophets and other servants of the true God, for shaping to themselves gods which were the mere creations of their own art and skill. The condemnation of idols in the Holy Scripture falls, therefore, not chiefly upon the mere use of images as representing the object of worship, but upon the making and honoring of images representing beings who, if they existed, would not be entitled to the worship they received, and who, in point of fact, had no real existence. Idolatry is also called in the Scripture demon-worship, because, as we understand it, the demons by means of it seduced men away from the worship of God, and also because, by possessing the images of the false gods, speaking through the oracles, and inciting to the commission of a multitude of crimes in connection with idolatry, they reduced the heathen into servitude to themselves.

The prohibition of images to be used in the worship sanctioned by the divine law was a precept of discipline enacted for a special reason. The reason was the same which lay at the foundation of that economy by which the trinity of persons in the Godhead, the incarnation of the Son in human form, the hierarchy of angels, the glory of the Mother of God, the exaltation of the saints to a deific union, were at first obscurely revealed, and only gradually disclosed to the clear knowledge and belief of the generality of the faithful. It was necessary to establish first the doctrine of the divine unity and spirituality, then the Trinity and Incarnation, so firmly in the faith of the people of God, that it could not be disturbed by anything similar to the corrupt worshipping of created things, before it was safe to allow the glorification of all creation and all nature, which is the consequence of the Incarnation, to be fully manifested. The Trinity and Incarnation were but dimly revealed, and only explicitly known by the élite of the faithful, in order that the attention of the childish, imperfect minds of those who lived in those early ages, surrounded by a brilliant and seductive polytheism, might be fixed principally on the unity and spirituality of the divine nature. It was the special mission of the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations to preserve and hand down the doctrine of the one, true God. There would have been a danger in distinctly revealing the Trinity before the time, that the dogma would have been corrupted and perverted by a false conception of the plurality of persons in the divine being, as of a plurality of beings. The Incarnation would have been perverted also into anthropomorphism, or the conception of the divine nature as identical with human nature. Too distinct a knowledge of the angelic hierarchy would have dazzled the minds of a people predisposed and continually tempted to idolatry, and would have withdrawn them from the contemplation and worship of God. Sculpture and painting would have affected their senses and imagination too powerfully, and would have fostered the disposition to conceive of the divine nature as divided among many deities, and resembling material, created objects. It was necessary that Christ should come and manifest himself to men in his true character, and that he should establish an infallible church, competent to teach and define the Trinity and Incarnation in their relation to the divine unity, to condemn all errors, and to direct the development of theology with unerring certitude, before the grand and abstruse mysteries of faith could be safely exposed to the gaze of the multitude. Our Lord himself proceeded with great caution in these matters, and so did the apostles and their successors. The trinity in unity and the person of Christ had first to be proposed and to be sunk indelibly into the mind of the church, before the Blessed Virgin and the saints could be brought prominently forward; and religion had first to be imbued with spirituality and pure, robust morality, before the splendor of worship and the riches of the fine arts, and all the subsidiary means of impressing the senses and the imagination, could receive their due development. Nevertheless, that the unity of revelation might be manifest and the continuity of development be kept unbroken, everything which was destined to bloom forth in its season in full splendor upon this grand plant of God whose branches are destined to overshadow the world, existed in germ and bud from the very beginning. It would lead us too far to follow up this thought. Orthodox Protestants will admit it in regard to the principal mysteries of Catholic faith. The text of Scripture shows plainly that ceremonial, architecture, and music, in a word, all that was not liable to lose its symbolic character too easily in the minds of the people, were profusely employed in the religion of the old law. Philosophy, poetry, science, and literature were kept in abeyance to a great extent, and yet given sufficiently for intellectual culture in the inspired writings. And, notwithstanding the restriction placed on sculpture and painting, yet images were to a certain extent made use of, by the divine commandment, for symbolic purposes in the sanctuary and in the temple. This is their true and legitimate use, and they are to be classed with other symbols, emblems, or exterior signs and representations to the senses of persons and things in the supersensible and celestial world. Sacraments, holy places, holy things, temples, altars, vestments, ceremonies, images, all belong to the same order, and find their reason and principle in the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the highest consecration and elevation of material substance and form. The body of Christ is hypostatically united to the divine nature and made the true, living image of the Godhead, as the Second Council of Nice teaches, the medium by which God is manifested in the sensible and visible order. Through Christ the whole material universe is sanctified and united with God as its final cause. The fanciful theosophies and mythologies of the heathen world were only abortive efforts to express this truth. Mr. Gladstone has recently given utterance to this idea in very beautiful language, so far as Greek polytheism is concerned, in his review of Ecce Homo. Heathen art was similarly a perverted foreshadowing of Catholic art, copied after the ideal, not of redeemed and glorified but of fallen nature, not of heaven but of hell, which is but a dark counterpart of heaven.

Modern Protestants will generally admit the lawfulness and utility of sculpture and painting, considered as the outward expression of the Christian ideal of beauty, the representation of persons, scenes, places worthy of respect, means of improving the senses and imagination with religious ideas. They are not like their ancestors, who defaced sanctuaries, rifled the tombs of the saints, burned relics, broke stained-glass windows, destroyed sculptures and paintings, and, with barbarous vandalism, did what they could to efface the glorious monuments of the ages of faith. The remnants of these sacred relics of antiquity which they have now in their possession they preserve with jealous care. They even make use of sculpture and painting to perpetuate their own heretical tradition, as well as to set forth what they have retained that is truly Christian. They adorn their churches with works of art, and erect monuments and statues to their own chiefs and leaders, as, for instance, the monument to the English pseudo-martyrs at Oxford, and the statue of Luther recently unveiled with so much pomp and ceremony at Worms. They are, therefore, precluded from making objection to the use of sculptured or painted images of Christ and the saints in general, and are restricted to objections against certain uses of these images in religious rites or worship, and certain acts of respect and veneration which are exhibited toward them. We will, therefore, proceed to show that this use of images is precisely identical in principle with that use of them to which Protestants do not object, and in conformity with the natural and necessary laws of the human mind, which even the most violent iconoclasts cannot break.

The human mind is forced to use images as its media; and, although it is not necessary to have these images sculptured or painted, it is by reason of the aforesaid necessity of using images of some kind that man instinctively seeks in sculpture and painting a suitable outward form and expression of his intellectual images, and finds so much pleasure in beholding these intellectual images expressed in works of art by others.

The human intellect is incapable of contemplating the divine essence immediately. It forms an intellectual conception or image which represents God to itself, but which is most imperfect and inadequate. Any one who should believe that God really is like the conception or imagination he is able to form of him, would commit as great an absurdity as one who should believe that he is like a venerable old man with a long white beard. Not only is the conception or intellectual image of God formed by the mind always inadequate, but it is often false in certain respects. Aristotle's conception of God was essentially a false one; so is that of the Deists, of the Calvinists, and of those Universalists who deny his retributive justice. Even the highest contemplatives, as they themselves positively affirm, although they speak of a certain purely spiritual and imageless view of God, never contemplate God so directly that they can dispense with every intellectual species or image as a medium, and intend only by imageless contemplation to designate a degree of subtility in their intellectual operations which renders them pure and spiritual by comparison with those of grosser minds. Probably most persons of uncultivated intellects represent God to their imagination under some majestic and venerable human form, and think of him as seated on a throne, in a superb palace, with his ministering angels, also clothed in corporeal forms, attending upon him. Those whose clear intellectual conceptions enable them to rid themselves of every image borrowed from the human figure in thinking of God, will still find that their minds make use of certain emblems, figures, or images of the divine attributes, such as light, the sea, the atmosphere. Much more will they find themselves compelled to transfer to their conception of the divine intelligence and volition the analogy of their own manner of thought, of their sentiments and affections. In the same manner, when a person thinks of Jesus Christ, meditates on his life, death, and glorified state in heaven, he will form to himself images which represent his ideal conception, images so much the more distinct as they reflect the humanity of Christ with which we are far more immediately united than we are with the divine nature, and which we are therefore able to represent more exactly and vividly to our imagination. Are we to say, then, that every person worships the image of God or of Jesus Christ which his intellect has formed, and becomes thereby an idolater? Certainly not. His reason and faith assure him of the existence of God and Christ as objectively real, distinct from his own mental conception, and surpassing all his apprehensions. His intention in worship is directed to God as he really is, and is true worship, although the intellectual media which the soul is obliged to make use of are imperfect and inadequate.

The case is no way altered if the sculptured or painted image of Christ is made use of, instead of or together with the intellectual image. The crucifix is only a permanent image affecting the exterior senses, as the intellectual representation is a transient image affecting the interior senses. Coleridge says that a picture is "an intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing." The same may be said of a statue, though a statue is more of a thing than a painting is. The material substance employed by the artist is merely the substratum of the form, which is something ideal, as language is merely the medium of thought. In painting or sculpture of real merit, the higher and more perfect conceptions of men who possess the artistic gift are transferred to the minds of those whose ideal conceptions are of an inferior order, or who, at least, are not able to give their conceptions an outward and permanent expression. The artist who makes a statue or painting of our Lord intends to represent him according to the ideal which he has in his own mind. His object is to bring the ideal conception of Christ vividly and distinctly before the imagination of the beholder. The more completely he succeeds in producing the desired effect, the more perfect will be the identification of the image with the object it represents in the imagination of the beholder; that is, the image, the more completely it is an image, the less does it attract attention to its own separate reality, and the more does it fix the attention of the mind on the object it represents. A person whose mind is susceptible to the influence of art, looking at a masterpiece of painting or sculpture, forgets that it is only a representation, and seems to himself to be looking at the reality. His imagination transports him to the scene of crucifixion, and he is spell-bound as he gazes on the face of the dying Christ. The same emotions arise in his mind that would arise if he were actually gazing upon the crucifixion itself. If he is a Christian, he will spontaneously elicit acts of worship toward the Son of God dying on the cross. These interior acts will manifest themselves by exterior signs, by the respectful posture, the silence, the reverential expression of countenance, the moistened eye, which betray the workings of the soul within to any attentive observer. Suppose that he kneels down and offers a prayer, that he kisses the feet of the image of Christ, that he exclaims aloud, "My Lord and my God!" is that idolatry? Is he worshipping a picture or a statue? If he is, then all the merely interior and mental acts of a person who is affected by a statue or picture of Christ are equally idolatrous. If the sculptured or painted image of Christ is really substituted for Christ himself, and receives as a reality, distinct in itself, any homage or affection which it terminates as an ultimate object, then all admirers of works of art are guilty of the same species of absurdity, commit the same unreasonable act, in a lesser degree, which culminates, in the case supposed, in the supreme folly of adoring marble, ivory, canvas, and paint. That class of persons who go into raptures over works of art, therefore, have nothing to say against the Catholic use of the crucifix which is not contradicted by their own practice and avowed sentiments. If the devout sentiments awakened by a crucifix or a painting of the crucifixion are legitimate for once and for the space of half an hour, they are legitimate at all times. If it is lawful to go to a picture-gallery in order to see a masterpiece, it is lawful to buy it, to hang it in an oratory, to visit it every day, and to make a regular and constant use of it, as a means of exciting devotion. If the inward sentiments it awakens are lawful, so is their outward expression; and if this outward expression is in itself lawful, it may be prescribed as a law by the ritual of the church. The same principle that justifies the making of a crucifix, and the looking upon it with emotion, justifies the church in placing it above the altar, bowing or genuflecting before it, incensing it, exposing it on Good Friday to veneration, and chanting the words: "Ecce lignum crucis, venite adoremus."

The crucifix, considered as a material object, is merely treated with the same respect which is shown to a Bible, an altar-cloth, a chalice, or any other object devoted to sacred uses. As a representation, it is not distinguished from the object which it represents, and the acts of interior or exterior veneration which terminate upon it are merely relative, and are referred altogether to Jesus Christ. They are like the kiss which a man imprints upon his wife's picture, or the uncovering of the head when a procession passes the statue of Washington. There is only one question, therefore, in regard to the veneration given to the crucifix, and that is, Does the object or person represented, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, deserve the worship of latria, or divine worship, which we pay to him, and which we signify by these exterior marks of respect toward his image? The same is the case with the images of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The veneration paid to them has no respect to the material of which they are composed, but passes to their prototypes, that is, the persons represented. The only question, therefore, is, Do these prototypes deserve the honor we intend to pay them? If they do, it is right to signify this honor by marks of respect to their images, such as bowing, offering incense, burning lights, decorating the shrines in which they are placed with flowers, and kneeling before them to offer prayers.

We have already shown that those who have the mere devotion of taste and imagination toward statues and pictures act in a manner precisely analogous, and pass through the same mental process which is exhibited by the Catholic in the respect which he pays to the sacred images of Christ and the saints. The only difference is, that the latter makes use of his imagination in the service of a real and practical faith and piety. His devotion is not a mere intellectual or sentimental devotion, but a spiritual exercise. It is, therefore, less dependent on the artistic merit and excellence of the representation than the merely sentimental excitement of the votary of art. A rude crucifix or a simple image of the Blessed Virgin is sufficient for the only purpose for which the devout Catholic makes use of them, as a help to fix the senses and attention, a sort of step-ladder by which he may raise his mind to the contemplation of Christ and his blessed mother. Many other circumstances give value to sacred objects besides their intrinsic worth. Their history, their antiquity, the associations connected with them, the traditions of past ages which cluster about them, often give them a sacredness far beyond the charm of symmetry and beauty. Of the two, we should much prefer to have Bernini's exquisite statue, over which the Rev. Mr. Bacon goes into raptures which betray his refined love of art, destroyed, rather than the venerable statue of St. Peter, which, with manners the reverse of exquisite and refined, he calls "a grimy idol." Even persons of the most exquisite taste often love an old house, old portraits, old articles of furniture, and many other old things, intrinsically ugly and valueless, far more than any similar objects which are new, costly, and fabricated in the highest style of art. For the same reason, certain objects of devotion, which are devoid of all artistic excellence, may be very dear and venerable to Catholics of the most cultivated taste. Much more, then, it is natural that rude and unsightly statues or pictures should be objects of devotion to Catholics of uncultivated taste. Protestants make a great mistake in judging of the sentiments of the common people in Catholic countries. They attribute to superstition what is really to be ascribed only to uncultivated taste. The sentiments which are awakened by masterpieces of art they can understand; but they cannot understand that ordinary and even grotesque images are masterpieces of art and models of beauty to the rude and childish mind of the multitude. To their prejudiced and distorted fancy, these images appear like idols, and the devotion of the people toward them like a stupid idol-worship. They do not appreciate the fact that they are to these simple people what chefs-d'oeuvre of religious art are to them—a vivid representation, in outward form, of their own highest ideal. The susceptibility of these untutored minds to those emotions which are awakened through the senses is far greater than that of the more educated, though it is not so chastened. This is especially the case with the southern races. Poetry, music, painting, everything which appeals to the imagination, finds a ready response in their ardent temperament. It is, therefore, a proof of the highest wisdom in the church that she has taken advantage of all these means of impressing religious ideas upon the minds of all classes of men in every stage of intellectual development. There are some whose devotion takes a more purely intellectual form, and who elevate their minds to God and heaven more easily by interior recollection and meditation than by any exercise of the imagination or any outward aids. A few prefer the solitude of a cell or a cave to Cologne Cathedral, and an hour's abstracted contemplation to all the pageantry of St. Peter's. Such are permitted and encouraged to follow the bent of their own inclination and the leading of the divine Spirit. The mass of men, however, even of the educated and cultivated, need the help of the exterior world to give them the images and emblems of divine and spiritual things without which they cannot fix their attention or awaken their emotions. The quality and quantity of the helps and instruments with which they worship God vary indefinitely. The devotion of those whose state is a kind of intellectual childhood, or in whose temperament imagination and passion predominate, will necessarily be more sensuous than that of more cultivated minds or races of a more cool and sedate temperament. It is the same principle, however, which pervades and regulates all; the spirit is one, though the form varies. The true mystic, who is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine nature, does not deny to the sacred humanity of Christ, to the Blessed Virgin, the saints, or to any holy things, their worth and excellence, although he does not fix his attention upon them so frequently and so directly as others. The great saints and theologians of the church never despise the devotions of the people or accuse them of superstition. The distinction between the intelligent few and the superstitious many in the Catholic Church, is one which the most highly educated and spiritually minded Catholics disdain and repudiate as a dishonor to themselves. It is made by sciolists, who are unable to answer the arguments of our theologians or to deny the sanctity of our saints, and who seek to evade in this way the overwhelming force of the evidence for the truth of our religion. The veneration of saints and the use of images in religious worship, they say, though it does not prevent the élite of Catholics from offering a supreme and pure worship to God and looking up to Jesus Christ as their only Saviour, leads the multitude to superstition and idolatry. We are better judges of the fact than they are. They know next to nothing of the practical working of our religion, or of the ideas and state of mind of our people. We know these things. We have, at least, as much abhorrence of idolatry as they have, and as much zeal for the enlightenment and spiritual welfare of the multitude. We know that there is no taint of superstition or idolatry in the devotion of our people. The Catholic Church keeps the ideas of God and Christ vividly before the minds of her children; they realize them in a manner of which those who are out of the church have no conception. The accusation of withdrawing from God and our Lord that which is due to them—to divide and scatter it among inferior beings—comes with a very bad grace from Protestants. What have they done to reclaim mankind from polytheism and to spread the worship of the true God? They have done nothing, except to cripple the efforts of the Catholic priesthood by sowing dissension in Christendom and giving the scandal of disunion to infidels. They have bred anew the old heresies against the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ which had become extinct, together with the more monstrous error of pantheism. We, the Catholic priesthood, have conquered the ancient heathenism, have planted everywhere Christianity, have established on an immovable foundation the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, together with the worship of his adorable name.

We are now carrying on the work of converting the heathen, and of defending theism and Christianity against the hosts of enemies raised up against them by the revolt of the sixteenth century. If Christianity is to gain in the future new and more glorious triumphs over the false religions of the world, it will be through our labors and our blood that she will win her victories. Not only do the defence and advancement of the supernatural order rest on us; we are obliged also to defend nature, reason, the arts, the poetry and romance of life, from a gloomy Puritanism, a hopeless scepticism, a desolating materialism, which would sweep away all spiritual philosophy, all sound science, all gayety and charm in life, all joyousness in religion, all ideality and heroism in the sphere of human existence. It is against a universal iconoclasm we have to contend—an iconoclasm which seeks to throw down and deface the image of celestial truth and beauty, to break the painted windows through which the light of heaven streams in upon this earthly temple, to efface those angelic and saintly forms with the Madonna who is the queen of the whole bright multitude, to overthrow the cross, and finally to drag down the sacred humanity of Christ, together with the deity that dwells in it and is worshipped through it, leaving mankind without a temple, an altar, a Saviour, or a God. We have learned the nature of the warfare we are engaged in too well from the conflicts of eighteen centuries, to be deceived or misled. We know that an attack on the smallest portion of the edifice of the Catholic Church means its total subversion, and that, consequently, it is just as necessary to resist it as if it were avowedly aimed at the foundation. We know that we cannot and must not yield up the smallest fragment of Catholic truth for any plausible end whatever. Although, therefore, the veneration of saints and holy images is not among the most necessary and fundamental parts of the Catholic religion, yet, as the principle from which it proceeds is an integral portion of Catholic doctrine, we shall always maintain it with the same fidelity as we do the primary truths of the Creed, the Unity and Trinity of the Godhead, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The images of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the saints, will always remain above our altars and on the walls of our churches; the Salve Regina and Litanies of the Saints will never cease to be chanted in our solemn services; and we shall continue to adore the Incarnate Word in his sacred humanity with the worship of latria until the end of the world.

Nellie Netterville; Or,
One Of The Transplanted.

Chapter XV.

Before leaving the guard-room, Ormiston poured out a large goblet of wine from a flask which he had sent one of the soldiers to procure at a wine-tavern hard by, and insisted upon Nellie drinking it to the last drop.

The remainder of the flask he gave to Roger, who, truth to say, was almost as much in need of it as Nellie; and they then all went forth together, O'More having previously pledged his word, both to Ormiston and Holdfast, to consider himself merely as a prisoner at large, until they themselves should release him from his parole.

Their way led them from the gate-house into Bridge street, and from thence to Ormond Gate, Earl's Gate, "Geata-na-Eorlagh," as it was then sometimes called. With Major Ormiston in their company, this was opened to them without a question, and they afterward proceeded, as fast as Nellie's strength permitted, up the steep hill street, debouching into the Corn Market. Entering the latter, they found themselves face to face with Newgate, the great criminal prison of the city. There it stood, dark, strong, and terrible—too strong, Roger could not help thinking, to be a fitting prison for the frail, dying woman it was guarding for the hangman. It seemed, indeed, almost like an abuse of power to have cast her there, so helpless as she was, and powerless, in the strong grasp of the law.

Newgate had originally formed a square, having at each of its four angles a tower, three stories high, and turreted at the top. Two of these however, those facing toward the city, had been recently taken down; and when Nellie looked upon it for the first time, it consisted merely of the gate-house, with its portcullis and iron gates, and a strong tower at either end. Near the prison stood the gibbet, metaphorically as well as really; for few, indeed, in those sad days, were the prisoners who, once shut up within the walls of Newgate, ever left them for a pleasanter destination than the gallows. From the position in which it stood, they could hardly avoid seeing it as they passed onward toward the prison; but in the faint hope of sparing at least poor Nellie's eyes this terrible apparition, Ormiston stepped a little in advance of his companions, and placed himself between her and it. Roger, however, upon whose arm she leaned, knew, by the sudden tremor which shook her frame that this tender caution had been in vain. Nellie, in fact, had already seen and guessed at the ghastly nature of its office there; and as her eye glanced reluctantly—and almost, as it were, in spite of herself—toward it, she felt as if she had never before thoroughly realized the awful position in which her mother stood. What wonder that she grew sick and giddy as the thought forced itself, in all its naked reality, on her mind, that her mother—her mother, the very type and personification of refined and delicate womanhood—might at any hour be dragged hither, shrinking and ashamed, beneath the rude hangman's grasp? What wonder that her very feet failed to do their office, and that Roger was compelled rather to carry than to lead her past the spot, never pausing or suffering her to pause until they stood before the gates of Newgate?

Here, as at the city gate, the name and authority of Ormiston procured them ready admission, the jailer receiving them with courtesy, and showing them at once into a low, vaulted room on the ground-floor of the prison. Notwithstanding this, however, Ormiston had no sooner announced the name of the prisoner they had come to visit, than the man showed symptoms of great and irrepressible embarrassment.

"The prisoner had been very ill," he muttered; "had burst a blood-vessel in the morning, and the bleeding had returned within the hour. A doctor had been sent for, and was at that moment with her; but if Major Ormiston could condescend to wait, he would call his wife, who was also in attendance on the poor lady, and would tell her to announce the arrival of a visitor. It must be done gently," he repeated over and over again, "very gently; for the doctor had already told him that any sudden shock would of necessity prove fatal."

Ormiston eyed the man curiously as he blundered through this statement. He knew enough of Newgate, as it was then conducted, to doubt much if the visit of a doctor was a luxury often vouchsafed to its inhabitants; and feeling in consequence that some mystery was concealed beneath the mention of such an official, he was almost tempted to fancy that Mrs. Netterville was already dead, and that, on account of the presence of her daughter, the man hesitated to say so. The next moment, however, he had leaped to another and more correct conclusion, though for Nellie's sake, and because intolerance formed no part of his character, he made neither question nor comment, as the jailer evidently expected that he would, on the matter. Greatly relieved by this apparent absence of suspicion on the part of the English officer, the man brought in a stool for Nellie to sit upon, and then once more announced his intention of going in quest of his wife. Just as he opened the door for this purpose, Ormiston caught a glimpse of a tall, gray-haired man, who passed down the passage quickly in company of a woman. The jailer saw him also, and with a sudden look of dismay upon his features, closed the half-opened door, and turned again to Ormiston.

"It was the doctor," he said with emphasis—"the doctor who had just taken his departure; and as there was nothing now to prevent their seeing the sick lady, he would send his wife at once to conduct them to her cell."

A long ten minutes followed, during which time Nellie sat quite still, her face hidden by her hands, and shivering from head to foot in fear and expectation. The door opened again, and she sprang up. This time it was the jailer's wife who entered.

"The poor lady had been informed," she said, "of the arrival of her daughter, and was longing to embrace her. Would the young lady follow her to the cell?"

Nellie was only too eager to do so, and they left the room together. Ormiston hesitated a moment as to what he would do himself; but not liking to leave Nellie entirely in the hands of such people as jailers and their wives were in those days, he at last proposed to Roger to follow and wait somewhere near the cell during her approaching interview with her mother. To this Roger readily assented, and they reached the open door just as Nellie entered and knelt down by her mother's side.

More than a hundred years later than the period of which there is question in this tale, the treatment of prisoners in the Dublin Newgate was so horrible and revolting to the commonest sense of decency and humanity as to demand a positive interference on the part of government. There is nothing, therefore, very astonishing in the fact, that the state in which Nellie found her mother filled her brimful with sorrow and dismay. The cell in which she was confined was low, and damp, and dark, and this she might have expected, and was in some degree prepared for; but she had not counted on the utter misery of its appointments; and the sight of her pale mother—death already haunting her dark eyes, and written unmistakably on her ghastly features—stretched upon the clammy pavement, a heap of dirty straw her only bed, and a tattered blanket her only covering, was such a shock and surprise to Nellie that, instead of joyfully announcing the fact of her reprieve to the poor captive, as she had intended, she fell upon her knees beside her, and wept over her like a child.

"Mother! mother!" was all that she could say for sobbing, as she took her mother's hand in hers and covered it with tears and kisses. Mrs. Netterville appeared for a moment too much overcome to speak, or even move, but gradually a faint flush passed over her wan face, and her eyes at last grew brighter and more life-like, when Nellie, making a strong and desperate effort to command her feelings, suddenly wiped away her tears and bent over the bed to kiss her.

"O mother! mother!" the poor girl could not refrain from once more sobbing, "is it thus that I see you after all?"

"Nay, child," the mother gasped with difficulty, "you should rather thank God for it on your knees. See you not it is an especial mercy? If I had not burst a blood-vessel to-day, to-morrow—yes, to-morrow"—a shudder ran through her wasted frame, and she broke off suddenly.

"But I have brought you a reprieve," sobbed Nellie, hardly knowing what she said, or the danger of saying it at that moment—"a reprieve which is almost a pardon. Only a few days more, and you would have been free, whereas now—now"—tears choked her utterance, and, hiding her face on her mother's scanty coverlet, she sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Mrs. Netterville half raised herself on her pallet bed. For one brief moment she struggled with that desire for life which lurks in every human breast, and which Nellie's exclamation had called forth afresh in hers. For one brief moment that phantom of life and liberty, lost just as they had been found again—lost just as they had become more than ever precious in her eyes—that contrast between what was to be her portion and what it might have been, deluged her soul with a bitterness more intolerable than that of death itself, and her frail body shook and trembled like an aspen leaf beneath the new weight of misery thus laid upon it. That one unguarded word of Nellie's had, in fact, changed, as if by magic, all her thoughts and feelings and aspirations. Death and life, and health and sickness, freedom and captivity, had each put on a new and unexpected aspect in her eyes, and that very thing which, only a minute or two before, had seemed to her soul as a source of real consolation, had suddenly taken the guise of a great misfortune. It was as if God himself had mocked her with feigned mercy; a weaker soul might so have said, and sunk beneath the burden! But with that strong and well-tried spirit the struggle ended otherwise.

Clasping her wasted hands together, and lifting up her eyes to heaven, the dying woman exclaimed, in a voice which none could hear and doubt of the truth of the sentiments it uttered, "My God! my God! Thy will, not mine, be done!" Then she fell back quietly on her pillow, exhausted indeed with the effort she had made, but calm and smiling and resigned, as if that sudden glimpse of renewed happiness and life had never, mirage-like, risen to mock her with its beauty.

The first use Mrs. Netterville made of her victory over nature was to comfort Nellie.

"Weep not, dear child," she whispered tenderly; "weep not so sadly, but rather thank God with me for the consolation which he has given us in this meeting. Where is Hamish?" she added, turning her dim eyes toward the open door, where Ormiston and O'More were lingering still, and evidently fancying that one or other of them was her absent servant—"where is Hamish? He has done my bidding bravely; why comes he not forward, that I may thank him?"

"Hamish is not here, mother; I left him with my grandfather."

"God help you, child!" moaned Mrs. Netterville, a sudden spasm at her heart at the thought of her unprotected child, "God help you! have you come hither all this way alone?"

"Mother," said Nellie in a smothered voice, "I am not alone. Roger More came with me. Without him it would have been impossible."

"Roger More—Roger More," repeated Mrs. Netterville, trying to gather together her memories of the days gone by. "It was in the arms of a Roger More that your father breathed his last."

"In mine, dear lady!" cried Roger, unable any longer to resist the temptation of presenting himself to Nellie's mother—"in mine! And knowing that the father did me the honor to call me friend, Lord Netterville has had the great kindness to entrust me with the daughter in this long journey, which the love she bears you compelled her to undertake."

Something in the tones of Roger's voice, rather than in the words he uttered, seemed to strike on the mother's ear. She smiled a grateful smile of recognition, and then turned a questioning glance, first upon his face and afterward on Nellie's. Perhaps Roger interpreted that glance aright. At all events, he took Nellie's hand, and, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, laid it on her mother's, saying:

"Only the day after that on which I saw her first, I told her that I would never ask for this dear hand until her mother was by to give it."

"Her mother gives it," said Mrs. Netterville solemnly. "Yes! for I guess by Nellie's silence that her heart is not far from you already."

"Mother, mother!" cried Nellie, resisting Mrs. Netterville's feeble efforts to place her hand in Roger's—"not here—not now—not when you are dying."

"For that very reason," gasped the mother. "My son," she added, fixing her eyes full on Roger, "you can understand. I would see my Nellie in safe hands before I go."

"It would be the fulfilment of my dearest wish," said Roger earnestly, "if only it be possible."

"It is possible," she was beginning; but pausing at the sight of Ormiston, who had by this time joined himself to the group around her bed, she added in an apprehensive tone, "but there is a stranger present."

"Not a stranger, but a friend," the young officer replied, in a tone of sincerity it would have been impossible to doubt, even if Nellie had not whispered, "A friend, indeed! Without him we could hardly have been with you now."

"Then I will trust him as a friend," Mrs. Netterville replied. "The gentleman who left me as you entered—"

"The doctor," Ormiston interrupted, with a marked emphasis on the word.

"Well, the doctor," she replied, with a languid smile. "He can do all I need, and he lives close at hand, with the merchant William Lyon, who knows him not, however," she added, mindful of the safety of the person named—"who knows him not in any other character than that of a lodger and chance sojourner in the city."

"In ten minutes he shall be here," said Ormiston, "if I can induce him to come with me. Meanwhile I will give orders to the jailer to leave you undisturbed."

"If you permit it, Major Ormiston, I will go with you," said Roger, not only zealous for the success of the embassy, but anxious, likewise, that before taking such a decided step Nellie should have the opportunity of a private conference with her mother. "I think my name, and a word which I can whisper in his ear, may be of use—otherwise he might fear a snare."

Ormiston assenting to this proposition, the young men departed, and for the first time since the commencement of their interview mother and daughter were alone together.

For some minutes, however, neither of them spoke. Mrs. Netterville lay back, endeavoring to recover breath and strength for the coming scene, and Nellie was completely stunned. The shock of finding her mother dying at the very moment when she had hoped to restore her to new life—the bodily weariness consequent on her journey—the sudden, and, to her, the most inexplicable resolution to which Mrs. Netterville had come in her regard—all combined to paralyze her faculties, and, hardly able to think or even feel, she sat like a statue on the floor beside her mother.

From this state of stupor she was roused at last by the sound of the dying woman's voice:

"Nellie!"

"Mother!" cried the girl; and then, as she felt that poor mother's hand feebly endeavoring to twine itself round her neck, she burst into a fresh flood of tears. They saved her senses, perhaps—who knows? Creatures as strong in mind as she was, and stronger far in body, have died or gone mad ere now beneath such a strain on both as had been put upon her for weeks.

"Nellie, my child—my only one—weep not!" her mother whispered tenderly. "Believe me, little daughter, that I die happy."

"O mother, mother!" Nellie sobbed; "and I thought to have given you life!"

Mrs. Netterville paused a moment, and then, in a voice tremulous with feeling, she replied:

"Nellie, I would not deceive you. Life is no idle thing to be cast off carelessly as a garment; and for one brief moment the thought that, but for this sudden malady, I might yet have lived some years longer, filled my soul with sorrow! But it is over now—more than over—and I am at peace. Why should I not? for you are safe—you for whom I chiefly clung to life! Yes! now that a man good and generous, as I long have known Roger More to be, is about to take my place beside you, I go without repining—nay, 'repining' is not the word," she said, correcting herself—"I go in great joy and jubilation to the presence of my God."

"O mother!" sobbed Nellie, cut to the soul by this allusion to her marriage, "that is the worst of all. Do not insist upon it, I entreat you."

"Silence, Nellie!" Mrs. Netterville answered, almost sternly. "Think you I could die happy if I left you—a child—a girl—unprotected in this wild city?"

"Mother, be not angry, I beseech you," Nellie pleaded, "if I remind you that I came hither safe!"

"Ay, but you were coming to your mother, and the world itself could say no evil of one bent on such a mission. To-morrow, Nellie, you will be motherless, and I will not have it said of you hereafter, that you went wandering through the country protected by a man who had no husband's right to do it. Child, child!" Mrs. Netterville added, in a tone of almost agonized supplication, "if you would have me die in peace, if you would not that your presence here (instead of joy) should cast gall and vinegar into the cup of death, you will yield your will to mine, and go back to your grandfather a wedded woman."

"Mother!" cried Nellie, terrified by the vehemence with which her mother spoke, "dear mother, say no more! It shall be even as you wish. I promise. Alas! alas! this weary bleeding has commenced again—what shall I do to aid you?"

Mrs. Netterville could not speak, for blood was gushing violently from her lips, but she pointed to a jug of water on the floor. Nellie took the hint at once, and dipped a handkerchief into the water; with this she bathed her mother's brow, and washed her lips, until by degrees the hemorrhage subsided, and the dying woman lay back once more pale and quiet on her pillow.

Just then, to Nellie's great relief, the jailer entered, bearing a lighted torch; for the sun was going down, and the cell was almost dark already.

After him came Ormiston and O'More, accompanied by the gray-haired man who had been with Mrs. Netterville at the moment of their own arrival in the prison. Ormiston took the torch from the jailer's hand, and placing a gold piece there instead, dismissed him, with orders to close the door behind him, and to give them due notice before shutting up the prison for the night. As he set the torch in the sconce placed for it against the wall, the light fell full upon Mrs. Netterville's face, which looked so pale and drawn that for a moment he thought that she was dead, and whispered his suspicion to the stranger.

The latter drew a small vial from his bosom, and poured a few drops upon her lips. They revived her almost immediately; she opened her eyes, and a smile passed over her white face as they fell upon her visitant. "You here again, my father!" she murmured beneath her breath. "I thank God that you have had the courage. You know the purpose for which I need you?"

"I know it—and, under the circumstances, approve it," the stranger answered quietly. "The sooner, therefore, that it is done the better it will be for all."

"Poor child—poor Nellie!" murmured Mrs. Netterville, as she caught the sound of the low sobbing which, spite of all her efforts at self-control, burst ever and anon from Nellie's lips. "Poor little Nellie! no wonder that she weeps. It is a sad, strange place for a wedding, is this prison-cell!"

"These are strange times," said the priest kindly, "and they leave us, alas! but little choice of place in the fulfilment of our duties. Nevertheless, sad as all this must seem at present, I am certain that your daughter will, some day or other, look back upon her wedding in this prison-cell with a sense of gladness no earthly pomp could have conferred on marriage; for she then will understand, even better than she does now, how, by this concession to a mother's wishes, she has secured peace and happiness to that mother's death-bed. That is," he added, turning and pointedly addressing himself to Nellie, "if sorrow for her mother's state is the sole cause for all this weeping?"

Nellie felt that he had asked indirectly a serious question, and she was too truthful not to answer it at once. She did not speak, however—she could not; but she gave her hand to Roger, and made one step forward.

"Come nearer," whispered her mother, "come nearer, that I may see and hear."

Roger drew Nellie nearer, until they both were standing close to the sick woman's pillow.

"Raise me up," the latter whispered faintly.

He lifted her in his strong arms, for she was as helpless as a child, and placed her in a sitting posture, with her back supported by the wall near which her bed was placed.

As soon as she had recovered a little from the faintness consequent on this exertion, she waved her hand to Roger as a signal that the ceremony should begin. The priest turned at once to the young couple, and commenced his office, making it as brief as possible. Brief, however, as it was, and bare of outward ceremonial, Ormiston, as he stood a little in the background, could not help feeling that he never before had looked on, might never again behold, such a strangely touching scene. The wasted features of the poor mother, for whom death seemed only waiting until her anxiety for the safety of her child had been set at rest for ever; the fair face of Nellie, pale now with grief and watching, but ready as a budding rose to flush into yet brighter beauty with the first return of sunshine; Roger, with such a look of grave yet conscious gladness in his eyes as best suited the mingled nature of the scene in which he was a foremost actor; the priest, who, at the risk of his own liberty or life, was fulfilling one of the most solemn offices of his sacred calling; the vaulted roof above, glistening in the damp as the light flashed on it, and the bare, bleak walls around, with the names of many a weary captive inscribed upon them; joy and sorrow, hope and fear; life springing forward, on the one hand, to its brightest hours, and sadly receding, on the other, into the shadows of the tomb—all were gathered together in that prison-cell, and combined to form a picture which would have needed the pencil of a great master to render in its full force and truth.

It was done at last! Nellie had said the word which made her a wedded wife, and Mrs. Netterville folded her in her arms, and whispered, "Thank you, dearest, thank you; for I know what this must have cost you!" and then placing her hand in Roger's, added, "Take her, my son—take her; God is my witness that I give her to you without a fear for her future happiness. To you in whose arms the father died I may well intrust the daughter!"

"You shall never repent it, mother—never!" said Roger, with that calm, determined manner which better than many words, brings assurance to the soul, of truth. "I loved her from the first day I saw her, not so much for her brightness and her human beauty, as for that higher beauty which I thought I discovered in her soul, and which she has bravely proved since then. Over beauty such as that time has no power; the love, therefore, that springs from it must last for ever."

"It is well, my son," replied Mrs. Netterville, "I thank you, and believe you. And now, be not angry if I bid you go! For this one day Nellie must be all my own—to-morrow there will be no one to dispute her with you."

She spoke the last words hurriedly, for the jailer entered at that moment to inform Ormiston that the prison was about to be shut up for the night, and that it was his duty to see that all strangers left it.

"But not Nellie—not my child?" said Mrs. Netterville, with an appealing look, first to the jailer and then to Ormiston. "Surely you will leave Nellie with me?"

"They must!" cried Nellie passionately, "for by force alone can they drag me from you."

"Sir," said the dying woman, addressing herself this time to Ormiston alone, "add this one favor, I beseech you, to all the others you have done me, and let my child close my dying eyes?"

"I cannot refuse you, madam," he replied, much moved. "But is your daughter equal to the effort? Would it not be better to have the jailer's wife as well?"

"No—no!" cried Nellie, answering before her mother, who looked half inclined to assent to this proposition, could reply. "I am equal, and more than equal. I would not have a stranger with us to-night for the world."

"Come for her, then, at the first dawn of day," said Mrs. Netterville, with a glance, the meaning of which they understood too well. She gave her hand in turn to each of the young men, and then signed to them to withdraw. Ormiston did so at once; but Roger turned first to Nellie, and taking her passive hand, lifted it silently to his lips. Not to save his life or hers could he have done more than that in the solemn presence of her dying mother.

He then followed Ormiston. The priest lingered a moment longer to speak a word of cheer to his poor penitent; but the jailer calling him impatiently, he also disappeared, and the cell-door was closed behind him.

Chapter XVI.

The rattling of the key in the lock as the jailer shut them up for the night came like a death-knell on poor Nellie's ear. So long as Ormiston and Roger had been there beside her, she had, quite unconsciously to herself, entertained a sort of hope that something (she knew not what) might yet be devised for the solace of her mother; and now that they were gone indeed, she felt as people feel when the physician takes his leave of his dying patient, thus tacitly confessing that all hope is over. The lamp, which, in obedience to a word from Ormiston, the jailer had brought in trimmed and lighted for the night, revealed the cell to her in all its bleak reality, and as she glanced from the straw pallet, which at Netterville they would have hesitated to place beneath a beggar, to the pitcher of cold water, which was the only refreshment provided for the dying woman, Nellie felt anew such a sense of her mother's misery and of her own inability to procure her comfort, that, unable to utter a single syllable, she sat for a few moments by her side weeping hopelessly and helplessly as a child. Mrs. Netterville heard her sobbing, and, after waiting a few minutes in hopes the paroxysm would subside, said gently:

"Nellie—my little one—weep not so bitterly, I entreat you; you know not how it pains me."

"How can I help it, mother?" sobbed the girl, unable to conceal the thought uppermost in her own mind. "You suffer, and the lowest scullion in the kitchen of Netterville would have deemed herself ill-used in such poverty as this!"

"Is that all, my child?" said her mother, with a faint smile. "Nay, dear Nellie, you may believe me, that, to a soul which feels itself within an hour of eternity, it is of little moment whether straw or satin support the body it is leaving. Eternity! yes, eternity!" she murmured to herself "Alas! alas! how little do we realize in the short days of time the awful significance of that word, for ever!

"Mother, you are not afraid!" burst from Nellie's lips, a new and hitherto unthought-of anxiety rushing to her mind.

"Afraid!" Mrs. Netterville echoed the expression with a smile. "No, my daughter, by the grace of God and goodness of Our Lady I am not afraid. Nevertheless eternity, with its ministering angel Death, are awful things to look on, Nellie, and if I could smile at aught which makes you weep, it would be to think that such a silly grievance as a straw pallet could add to their awfulness in your eyes."

"Not to their awfulness, mother," Nellie sobbed, "but to their sorrow; it is such a pain to see you comfortless."

"And has no one else been comfortless in death?" Mrs. Netterville whispered almost reproachfully. "Only consider, Nellie, this straw bed which you lament so bitterly is a very couch of down compared to His, when he laid him down upon the hard wood of the cross to die."

"Mother, forgive me; I never thought of that," said Nellie humbly. "I only thought of your discomfort."

"Think of nothing now, dear Nellie, but this one word of Scripture, 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;' and hope and pray that it may be so with me to-night. Now, dry your eyes and listen, for I have much to say, and but little time left wherein to say it. Dry your eyes, for I cannot bear to see you weeping thus. Your tears have almost the power to make me repine at death."

The last hint was sufficient. Nellie resolutely checked her tears, and laid her head down on her mother's pillow, in order that the latter might speak to her with less danger of fatigue.

Then, in a few earnest, touching words, Mrs. Netterville set before her daughter the duties of her new state of life, and gave advice, which, precious as it would have been at any time, was doubly precious then, coming as it did from the lips of a dying mother; after which, true to an idea ever uppermost in the Irish mind, and which she had too thoroughly adopted her husband's country not to feel as keenly upon almost as he could have done himself, she adverted to her own place of burial.

"It cannot be at Netterville, I know," she said. "I may not sleep, as I had ever hoped, by the side of my brave husband! But in your new western home, dear Nellie—in your new western home, where the churches, I believe, are yet undesecrated—there, if it be possible, I would gladly take my rest—there, where you can come sometimes to pray for your poor mother, and where, when my husband's father follows me, as no doubt he must full soon, he can be laid quietly to sleep beside me."

She paused, and Nellie muttered something, she hardly knew what, which she hoped would sound like an assent in her mother's ears. Not for worlds would she have saddened her at such a moment by allowing her to discover that Roger, like themselves, had been robbed of his inheritance, and that, instead of that quiet western home of which she spoke so confidently, her wedded life with him must be spent of necessity in a foreign land.

Whatever she did or did not say, her mother evidently fancied it was a promise in conformity with her wishes, and went on in that low, rambling way peculiar to the dying:

"It was not thus—not thus that I had thought to visit that wild land. I dreamed of a resting-place and a welcome—a meeting of mingled joy and sadness—and then a homely life, and at its close a peaceful ending. But it is better as it is—much better. Our next meeting will be all of joy—joy in that eternal home where God gathers together his beloved ones, and bids them smile in the sunshine of his presence. Yes, yes! it is better as it is!"

"As God wills. He knows best—he knows," and then Nellie stopped, powerless to complete the sentence.

"Remember me to my father, Nellie, "Mrs. Netterville continued faintly—"for father I may truly call him who has been in very deed a parent to me ever since I was wedded to his son. And poor Hamish also—let him not think himself forgotten, and tell him especially of the gratitude I feel for this great consolation procured me by his faithful service—my Nellie's heart to rest on in dying—my Nellie's hands to close my eyes in death."

The last words were barely audible, and after they were uttered Mrs. Netterville lay for a long time so mute and still that, fancying she was asleep, Nellie hardly dared to move, or even almost to breathe, lest she should disturb her. At last she felt her mother's hand steal gently in search of hers.

"Your hand, dear Nellie," she whispered softly. "Nay, do not speak, my daughter, but take my hand in yours, that I may feel, when I cannot see, the comfort of your presence."

Nellie took her mother's hand in hers. It was as cold as ice, and she gently tried to chafe it. But the movement disturbed the dying woman.

"It prevents me thinking, Nellie," she whispered faintly, "and my thoughts are very sweet."

The words sent a gush of tenderness and joy to Nellie's heart, telling her, as they did, that her mother's was at peace. But the physical condition of that poor mother still weighed heavily on her soul, and taking the mantle from her own shoulders, she laid it on the bed, hoping thus gradually and imperceptibly to restore warmth to the failing system. Mrs. Netterville perceived what she had done, and, true to that forgetfulness of self which had been the chief characteristic of her life, she would not have it so. "Nay, nay, child," she murmured as well as she could, for she was by this time well-nigh speechless, "put it on again, for you need it, and I do not. This death-chill is not pain."

She tried to push it from her as she spoke, and became so uneasy that Nellie, in order to calm her, was forced to resume the garment. Satisfied on this point, her mother closed her eyes like a weary child, and fell into a dozing slumber. It was the stupor preceding death, but Nellie, never suspecting this, felt thankful that her mother's hacking cough had ceased, and that her breathing had become less painful. For more than an hour she sat thus, her mother's hand in hers—praying, watching, weeping—weeping silent, soundless tears—not sobbing, lest it should disturb the sleeper.

The night passed onward in its course, but day was yet far off when the lamp began to waver. Sometimes it flickered and sputtered as if just going to be extinguished, and then again it would flare up suddenly, casting strange shadows through the gloomy space, and deepening the pallor on the sleeper's brow, until it almost seemed as if she were dead already. Lower still, and lower, after each of these fresh spurts, it sank, while Nellie watched it nervously; but just as she fancied that it had actually died out, it flashed up high and bright again, full upon her mother's face. Nellie turned eagerly to gaze once more upon those dear features. Even as she did so, a rush of darkness seemed to fill the cell—darkness that could be almost felt—and a pang seized upon the poor girl's heart, for she knew at once by intuition that the lamp was now gone indeed, and that she had looked for the last time on the face of her living mother.

The sudden change from light to darkness seemed somehow to disturb the invalid. She opened her eyes wearily, and something like a shudder passed over her; but when she felt her daughter's hand still clasping hers, a heavenly smile (pity that Nellie could not see it then—she saw its shadow on the dead face next day, however) settled on her features, and she whispered:

"You here still, dear child? Thank God—thank God for that!"

"Mother, what would you?" Nellie asked, amid her tears.

"It is coming, Nellie; be not frightened, dearest. It is coming like a gentle sleep. Pray for me, dear one; pray loud, that I may hear you."

What prayer could Nellie say at such a moment? An orphan already by the loss of her father, she was about to be doubly orphaned in her mother's death, and her thoughts turned naturally and spontaneously toward that other Parent whose home is heaven, and who, Father as he is to each of us, has pledged himself to be so in a yet more especial and individual manner to the fatherless of his earthly kingdom.

The words of the "Our Father" seemed to rise unbidden to her lips.

"Our Father who art in heaven."

"Who art in heaven," her mother repeated after her; and then came a pause of sweet, and solemn meditation.

"Thy kingdom come," Nellie once more found voice to say. Mrs. Netterville had ever kept the desire of that kingdom in her heart of hearts. Surely he was now calling her to enjoy it in eternity! So Nellie thought, and the thought gave her strength and courage to go on.

"Thy will be done!"—that will which was calling her last parent from her side. Nellie sobbed aloud as she uttered the words, but Mrs. Netterville took them up, and, in a voice of ineffable love and sweetness, kept repeating over and over again, as if she never could weary of the sentiment.

"Thy will be done; thy will—thy will—thy will, ever merciful and to be adored—thy will, my God, my Father, and my Redeemer—thy will, not mine, be done!"

Nellie listened until she almost felt as if she herself were standing with her mother on the threshold of eternity. A sweet and awful calmness settled on her soul. She knew intuitively that her mother was in the very act of dying, but she no longer felt fear or sorrow. It was as if the Judge of the living and the dead, not stern and exacting, but tender and approving, was descending in person to that bed of death to speak the sentence of his faithful servant. It was as if saints and angels were crowding after him, bowed down, indeed, beneath his awful presence, but yet glad and jubilant over the crowning of a sister spirit, and bringing the songs and sweetness of heaven itself on the rustling of their snowy wings. And in the midst of such thoughts as these, Nellie still could hear her mother's voice repeating, "Thy will, my God, not mine, be done."

Fainter still and fainter grew that voice, as the soul which spoke by it receded toward eternity; then all at once it died away, and Nellie felt that the last word had been said in heaven.

It was very dark now, and very cold—the cold that precedes the dawn—cold in Nellie's heart within, and cold in the outside world around her. She shivered, and was scarcely conscious that she did so. Was her mother really dead? She knew it, and yet could scarce believe it. For a little while she knelt there still, waiting and holding in her breath in the vague, faint hope that once more, if it were even for the last time, once more that sweet, plaintive voice might greet her longing ear. But it never came again. At last, by a great effort, she put forth her trembling hand and touched her mother's face. It was already growing cold, with that strange, hard coldness which makes the face of the dead like a marble mask to the living hands that touch it. She shuddered; nevertheless, with an instinctive feeling of what was right and proper by the dead, she did not withdraw it until she had pressed it gently on the eyelids, and so closed them without almost an effort.

That done, she knelt down once more, and, hiding her face in the scanty bedclothes, tried to pray.

......

Day began to dawn at last, and a few sad rays forced their way into that gloomy cell; but Nellie never saw them. Sounds began to come in from the newly-awakened city, but Nellie never heard them. The prison itself shook off its slumbers, and there was a slamming of distant doors and an occasional hurried step along the passages; and still she took no heed. She knew, in a vague, careless way, that at one time or another some one would be sent to her assistance, and that was all she thought or cared about it. In the mean time she prayed, or tried to pray; but when at last they did come, they found her stretched upon the floor, as cold almost and quite as unconscious as her dead mother.

Chapter XVII.

"To the memory of Francis, Twelfth Baron of Netterville, one of the Transplanted, and of Mary, the widow of his only son."

Nellie stooped to decipher the inscription, but it may be doubted if she saw aught save the stone upon which Hamish, in obedience to his master's dying orders, had engraved it, for her eyes were full of tears. A hurried journey to the west, another death-bed, and a few weeks more of tears and renewed sense of desolation had followed the events recorded in our last chapter, and then at last a holy calmness settled upon Nellie's soul—a calmness and a happiness which was all the more likely to endure that it was founded upon past sorrows bravely met and meekly borne, in a spirit of true and loving resignation to the will of Him who had laid them on her shoulders. From the day of her departure from Clare Island, the old lord had drooped like a plant deprived of sunshine, and he died on the very evening of her return, his hand in hers, smiling upon her and her brave husband, and leaving for only vengeance on his foes the inscription which heads this chapter, to be engraved upon his tombstone.

Nellie laid him to rest beside her mother; for through the kindness of Ormiston she had been enabled to carry out Mrs. Netterville's dying wishes, and to bear her remains to that western shore which she had so fondly and so vainly fancied was to be her daughter's future home. Ormiston had done yet more. He had obtained a reversal of the sentence of outlawry against Roger, coupled with the usual permission to "beat his drum," as it was called, for recruits to follow his banner into foreign lands, to fight in the armies of foreign kings. It was the evil policy of those evil times.

To rid Ireland of the Irish was the grand panacea for the woes of Ireland, the only one her rulers ever recognized, and of which, therefore, they availed themselves most largely, careless or unconscious of the fatal element of strength they were thus flinging to their foes. As a native chieftain and a well-tried soldier, Roger had a double claim upon his people, and short as had been the time allotted to him for the purpose, fifty men, of the same breed and mettle as the soldiers who fought at a later period against an English king until he cursed, in the bitterness of his heart, the laws which had deprived him of such subjects, had already obeyed his summons. They assembled under the temporary command of Hamish, near the tower, waiting the moment for embarkation, and the ship that was to convey them to their destination was riding at single anchor in the bay on that very morning when Nellie and her husband knelt for the last time beside her mother's grave. It was like a second parting with that mother. But with Roger at her side she could not feel altogether friendless or unhappy, and they prayed for a little time in silence, with a calm sense of sadness which had something of heavenly sweetness in it. At last it was time to go, and Roger laid a warning finger upon his young wife's shoulder. She did not say a word, but she bent down once more and kissed her mother's name upon the stone; then she gave her hand to Roger, and they left the churchyard together. While she had been lingering there, Henrietta had landed with Ormiston at the pier to bid her a last adieu. The quick eye of the English girl instantly perceived the goodly company of recruits assembled near the tower, and with a little smile of malicious triumph she pointed them out to her companion. Ormiston shook his head reprovingly. He was too thoroughly a soldier not to lament the policy which drafted large bodies of men into foreign armies, but he was full at that moment of his own concerns, and had little inclination to waste time in discussing the wisdom of his leaders. The truth was, Henrietta's reception of him on his arrival from Dublin the night before had disappointed him. He had come in obedience to her own written orders, as conveyed to him by Nellie, and instead of the frank, loving meeting which his own frank and loving nature had anticipated, he had found her shy, cold, and, he was forced to confess to himself, almost unkind. At first he consoled himself by attributing this in a great measure to the presence of her father, before whom she always seemed naturally to assume the bearing of a spoiled and unruly child; but when at her own invitation he had rowed her that morning to Clare Island, and her manner, instead of softening, as he had hoped, grew even colder and more constrained than it had been before, he became seriously distressed, and unable to endure the suspense any longer, they had hardly landed from the boat ere he turned short round upon her, and said:

"Henrietta, before you move one step further, you must answer me this question—are we in future to be friends or foes?"

"Not foes! Oh! certainly, not foes!" Henrietta stammered, taken quite aback by the suddenness of the question. "Oh! certainly, not foes!"

"Because I cannot endure this uncertainty much longer," he went on as if he had not heard her. "I must have an answer, and that soon. I might, indeed, insist upon your own letter, but I will not. It was written under a sudden impulse, and the word that gives you to me for a wife must be said with a calm consciousness of its import. What shall that word be, Henrietta—yes or no?"

"Yes, if you will have me," she said, in a low voice, half-turning away her head as she did so.

"If! So long and so faithfully as I have loved you, and do you still talk of if?" he answered, almost reproachfully.

"There is an 'if,' however," said Henrietta; "and when you have heard me out, you will have to decide the question for yourself."

"Nay, the only 'if' for me is the 'if' that you really love me," he replied wistfully, and in a way which showed he felt by no means certain upon that score.

"That is the very thing," she answered, flushing scarlet. "Harry, dear Harry, remember that I have never had a mother's care, and promise to be still my friend, even if what I have got to tell you should alter all your other wishes in my regard."

"What can you have to say that could do that?" he asked impatiently. "For God's sake, Henrietta, say it out at once, whatever it may be!"

"It is not so very easy, perhaps," she said in a low voice. And then she added quickly: "They call me a woman grown, Harry, and yet in some few things I think that I am still almost a child."

"In a great many things rather, I should say," he could not resist saying, with a smile.

That smile reassured her, and she went on quickly: "You know that it has never been a new thing to me to consider myself your wife, Harry. My father has treated me from childhood as your affianced bride, and we have played at being wedded in the nursery. You cannot be surprised, therefore, if in my feelings toward you there has been something of unquestioning security, which does not enter usually, I think, into the relations in which we stood toward each other. This kind of sisterly feeling—oh! do not look so cross, Harry," she cried, suddenly stopping short, "or I shall never be able to go on." "Do not talk of sisterly feeling, then," he answered moodily, "for that I cannot bear."

"I need not, for I do not feel in the least like a sister to you now," she answered, with a pretty naïveté, that made him almost depart from the attitude of cold seriousness in which he had elected to receive the confessions of his betrothed. He checked the impulse, however, and signed to her quietly to proceed.

"You know, for you were with us at the time," she accordingly went on, "how much I was charmed with this wild western land when my father first brought me hither. You know, too, of my indignation when I found that the real owner had been deprived of it in order to our possession. True, I had heard before of the law of transplantation enacted for the benefit of our army, but not until it stared me in the face as an act of private injustice, done for the enrichment of myself, did I thoroughly appreciate its iniquity. From that moment the very abomination of desolation seemed to me to rest upon this land, which I had once felt to be so beautiful. I grew angry and indignant with all the world—with my father chiefly, but with you also, Harry, because, though I acquitted you of all active share in the robbery, I yet felt that it was your character as a good officer, capable of holding it against the enemy, which had encouraged him to commit it. From dwelling upon the injustice, I went on almost unconsciously to question of its victim. At first, however, I only thought of him with a sort of contemptuous pity, as of a half-tamed savage wandering sadly among the hills which had once been his own. But one day I met him. You remember that evening when I returned home so late, that you and my father became alarmed and went out to seek me? I told you then that I had lost my way, but I did not tell you that it was the O'More who had helped me to regain it, and who, finding I was nervous at the lateness of the hour, had walked back with me nearly to the gates. He was a gentleman, there was no mistaking that; and there was something so foreign in his look and accent, that I never even dreamed of him as the owner of the Rath, until I asked him to come in and make the acquaintance of my father. Then—I can hardly tell you in what words, but I know that they were courteous, and that I felt them to be all the more cutting for that reason—he told me WHO he was. In my surprise and shame, I tried, I believe, to stammer out something like an apology for the wickedness of which he had been the victim; but he cut me short with a cold, quiet smile, pointed to the gate, which we had by this time almost reached, saluted, and so left me. Harry, from that moment, wild dreams began to float through my brain as to how I might restore him to his own. There was one way, and only one way, in which, as a woman, I could do it. Remember, I was not yet seventeen, dear Harry."

"I have need to be reminded of it," he answered bitterly, "when I am forced to listen to such things as you are saying now."

"And yet I loved you all the time, Harry; I did, indeed," she answered in a low, earnest voice. "I loved you, although I think I knew it not—should never, perhaps, have known it quite, if we had not at last quarrelled and parted, as I thought, for ever. In the first keen suffering which that parting caused me, my heart woke up all at once to a true knowledge of itself, and I felt that, dormant as my love for you had been, it had yet become so deeply rooted in my whole being that by no effort of my own will, (and you know that it is a pretty strong one, Harry,") she added with a faint smile—"by no effort of my own will could I have transferred it to another."

"Go on," said Harry, now smiling in his turn, for she had paused in a little maidenly confusion at this full and frank avowal of her sentiments in his regard—"go on, for I can listen to you with patience now, Ettie."

"I never dreamed again, Harry, of any other than yourself," she answered softly; "and When, the day after your departure, I went to Clare Island to warn him of a coming danger, (but not, I do assure you, with any other motive,) I saw at once that if he ever cared for any woman in the world, it was, or soon would be, Nellie Netterville. It did not grieve me that it was so, but I confess it wounded my woman's vanity a little, and for a moment I felt inclined to be angry with her. But I was ashamed of the pitiful feeling, and for the first time in my life, perhaps, I tried to conquer my evil passions. In this her sweet, quiet frankness greatly helped me, and her forgetfulness or forgiveness of the great injury I, or at all events, my father, had inflicted on her, made me blush for my own unkindness. If ever you take me for a wife, Harry, and that you find me a more manageable one than I have given you reason to expect, remember that you will owe it entirely to her example."

"Nay, nay! not entirely!" here interposed Harry, "for the sun shines in vain upon a barren soil."

"And now," continued Henrietta, regardless of the compliment, "can you forgive me, Harry? Believe me, you know all, I have told you the truth, and the whole truth. I would not deceive you in such a matter for the world."

"My love, I believe you, and I am more than satisfied," he answered in a tone of trustful tenderness which left no room for doubting in Henrietta's mind.

"And, Harry," she added pleadingly, "our home that we have left in England is as pleasant, if not so sublime, as this, and we can call it, at all events, honestly our own!"

"Some day, dear Ettie, we will go there; and should your father's death ever place these lands at our disposal, we will leave them to their rightful owner."

"O Harry! how could I doubt you?" she said remorsefully. "Can you ever forgive me for it?"

"Yes, if you will never doubt again," he answered with a bright smile. "But, hark! the bugle sounds, and yonder is Roger and his wife talking to old Norah at the tower-gate."

Henrietta looked in that direction, and she saw that Nellie was taking leave of the old woman, who had flung herself at her feet, and was sobbing bitterly. This much she could guess from the attitude and action of both parties; but she could not guess the infinite delicacy and feeling which Nellie contrived to put into that last farewell, nor yet the reverent admiration with which Roger watched his young wife, as, silencing her own deeper sorrows, she soothed the old woman's clamorous grief over the departure of her hereditary chieftain and his bride, "her beautiful, darling, young honey of a new mistress!"

Nellie was still occupied in this manner when the bugle once more sounded. The soldiers, who at the first summons had mustered together under the command of Hamish, instantly put themselves into motion, and, with flags flying and pipers playing, marched past the tower, saluting Roger as they did so, and coming down to the place of embarkation amid the wails of music which, martial and spirit-stirring in the beginning, had died gradually away into such wild, plaintive strains as best befitted the thoughts of men who were leaving their native land for ever. Another moment, and Nellie threw herself into Henrietta's arms, and the two girls sobbed their farewells in silence. Then some one separated them almost by force, there was a short bustle of departure and a clashing of oars, and when Henrietta could see again through her blinding tears, Nellie had nearly reached the ship which was to convey her to her new home; while over the crested waves came the voices of the soldier-emigrants singing that farewell song which rang so often and so sadly in those days along the coasts of Ireland, that it has left, unhappily, many an echo still to wake up thoughts of bitterness and distrust in the minds and memories of her living people.

Years afterward, when Henrietta was a happy wife and mother in her quiet English home, and her friends, thanks to her generosity and her husband's, were once more settled in that western land which was dearer to them than all the shining kingdoms of the earth, the music of that wild "Ha-till" would strike at times suddenly on the chord of memory, and she would weep again almost as bitterly as she had wept upon that late autumn morning when, floating over the waters of Clew Bay, came those voices to her ear, sadly singing:

"Mute in our grief, our fortunes broken.
Land of Eire, [Footnote 221] farewell, farewell!
Sad is that word—half-wept, half spoken—
Sad as the sound of the passing bell.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!

"Ever in dreams to see thee weep!
Ever to hear thy wail of pain!
Bitter as death, and as dark and deep.
The grief that we carry across the main.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!

"Happy the dead who have died for thee!
More happy the dead who died long ago!
Who never in sleep had learned to see
The grief and shame that have laid thee low.
Ha-till, ha-till we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore.

"Farewell! we have poured out our blood like rain,
We asked for naught but a soldier's grave;
Yet say not thou we have sought in vain.
While foes confess that thy sons are brave.
Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more,
Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore."

[Footnote 221: The ancient name for Ireland.]

The End.

The Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac,
Canonized By Pope Pius IX. In 1867.

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, beneath the walls of Toulouse, bloomed, almost unseen and unknown, a little flower of the fields, whose delicate chalice emitted a perfume scarcely perceptible to mortal sense. It passed away, and seemed forgotten; but its odor still lingered where it had blossomed; and after a few years had gone, its dust was gathered into the sanctuary, that the holy place might be filled with the celestial fragrance.

Germaine Cousin was born at Pibrac, a village of nearly two hundred families in the environs of Toulouse, about the year 1579. The parish church was dependent on the great Priory of the Knights of Malta in that city. The chateau belonged to the Du Faur, Lords of Pibrac. The actual proprietor was Guy, famous at once as an orator, a poet, and a successful courtier. Once the proudest remembrance of the place was the visit of Catharine de Medicis and her daughter, Margaret of Navarre, who were magnificently entertained by the Lord of Pibrac. But now the visit of the two queens, and the fame and opulence of the great orator, are nearly forgotten; while the memory of our holy shepherdess has lived for nearly three centuries in the hearts of all the inhabitants of Pibrac. The chateau is a forsaken ruin; but the church has become a place of pilgrimage, because Germaine prayed beneath its arches, and there found a tomb.

Her father was a poor husbandman, to whom tradition gives the name of Lawrence. Her mother's name was Marie Laroche. From the first moment of her existence, she seemed destined to suffering and affliction. She was infirm from her birth, being unable to use her right hand, and afflicted with scrofula. While yet a child, she became motherless; and, as if these were not trials enough to accumulate at once upon the head of one so frail, her father did not long delay to fill the vacant place on his hearth. Absorbed in her own children, this second wife, instead of pitying the hapless orphan whom Providence had confided to her care, conceived an aversion for her. But the trials to which Germaine was subjected were proofs of the divine favor. To them she was indebted for the brilliancy of her virtues, especially humility and patience.

As soon as she was old enough, her step-mother, who could not endure her presence at home, sent her forth to guard the flocks. This was her occupation the remainder of her life. But even in the depths of her lonely life, our shepherdess created for herself a more profound solitude. She was never seen in the company of the young shepherds; their sports never attracted her; their jeers never disturbed her thoughtful serenity; she only spoke sometimes to girls of her own age, sweetly exhorting them to be mindful of God!

We know not from whom Germaine received her first religious instructions—what hand, friendly to misfortune, revealed to her the great truths of salvation. Doubtless, it was the curé of the parish; for holy church despises not the meanest of her children; and her sagacious eye is quick to discover the chosen of God. But, whoever it was, he did but little, and there was little to be done. God himself perfected the religious training of his handmaiden. She early learned what must for ever remain unknown to those who do not recognize in him the fountain of all wisdom. Living amid the wonders of creation, she contemplated them with the intelligent eye of innocence. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God—see him in the brilliant stars, the burning sun, the unfathomable heavens, and the changing clouds—see him in the flowers and plants that cover the surface of the earth! Germaine learned from the open book of nature a wondrous lore; and her attuned ear caught and comprehended that mysterious, anthem of praise, which, floating through creation, is unheard by more sinful man. Her pure soul united in the eternal song: Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino: laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula!

Although Germaine was a poor infirm orphan, subjected to the heavy yoke of a severe step-mother, and exposed by her occupation to the inclemency of the weather, she bore all her trials with cheerfulness, never brooding over her sorrows. One of the characteristics of the saints which particularly distinguishes them from ordinary Christians, is, the use made of the common occurrences of life. They share in common with other men, and often in a greater degree, the trials common to humanity; but they are chastened, purified by them, and they look upon the afflictions of this life as a means of assimilating them to Him who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Even in the manifest ill treatment and injustice of the malignant and wicked, they disregard the channel, but accept the suffering, as a means of perfection.

The extent to which this principle is carried, is peculiarly Catholic; and, in reading the lives of our saints, we cannot but be struck by it. They never struggled against their trials, and therefore were cheerful under them; for the greater part of our wretchedness proceeds from struggling against the current of life. This is the key to the saying of Fénélon: Non-resistance is a remedy for every ill.

The paternal roof was not for Germaine, as for most—even the most wretched—a refuge and a place of repose. And yet neither her poverty, nor sorrows, nor infirmities, could have rendered her insensible to that which surpasses all the other pleasures of life—the happiness of being loved. By a divine foresight, God has placed in the hearts of parents, by the side of that fount of love for their offspring, a well of singular tenderness for the unfortunate child, the black lamb of the flock. This peculiar love Germaine had not. She had not even the legitimate share of her father's heart. She was denied a place at the fireside; she was hardly allowed shelter in the house. Her step-mother, irritable and imperious, would send her away to some obscure corner. She was not permitted to approach the other children—those brothers and sisters whom she loved so tenderly, and whom she was always ready to serve without manifesting any envy on account of the preferences of which they were the object, and she the victim. The inflexible harshness of her step-mother obliged the infirm girl to seek a place of repose in the stable, or upon a heap of vine branches in an out-house.

But Germaine knew too well the value of sufferings not to accept with joy these humiliations and this injustice. And, as if her cross were yet too light, she imposed upon herself additional austerities. During the greater part of her life, she denied herself all nourishment but bread and water.

So great a conformity to her poor, suffering, and persecuted Saviour, kindled in the heart of Germaine an ardent love for his adorable humanity. Notwithstanding her feebleness and other obstacles, she assisted every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even the obligations of her calling could not keep her from church at that hour. Confiding in God, she left her flock in the pasture, and hastened to the foot of the altar. It is a misguided piety which induces us to neglect the duties of our state of life in order to satisfy our devotion; but with Germaine this was the result of prompt obedience to a special inspiration. She knew who would guard her sheep; while she, poor lamb of Christ's flock! went to refresh herself at the fountain of living water.

Even when her sheep were feeding close by the wood of Boucone, which skirted the fields of Pibrac, and abounded with wolves, at the sound of the church bell she would plant her crook or her distaff in the ground, and hasten to the feet of the divine Shepherd. At her return, she always found her sheep unharmed. Not one was ever devoured by the wolves, nor did they ever stray into the neighboring fields.

Long after St. Germaine's death, the peasants of the hamlet remembered the unearthly brightness of her face as, week after week, she approached the holy sacraments.

"A celestial brightness, a more ethereal beauty,
Shone on her face and encircled her form when, after confession,
Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her."

In the Holy Eucharist she found a compensation for every grief. That divine Spouse to whom she was pledged placed himself as a seal upon her heart, thereby strengthening it to endure the trials of life, and enriching it with such abundant grace that, while dwelling at large in the great temple of nature, her life gleamed before him, brightly, and purely, and constantly, like the undying lamp of the sanctuary!

Like all the saints, Germaine had a singular devotion to Mary—that devotion so dear to the Catholic heart, and which is considered by the fathers as a mark of predestination. The world does not realize how much it has owed to Mary during these eighteen hundred years; yet some, some of us know how dark and almost unbearable it would be with its sorrows, and cares, and privations, if over all were not diffused the beauty and softness, the sweet charm of virginity and love, from the divine face of Mary!

To Germaine, the Ave Maria was another salutation of the angel preluding the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost; and she murmured the sacred words with infinite tenderness, above all, at the hour when they are on every lip. As soon as she heard the Angelus bell, which has three times a day, for six centuries, intoned the Ave Maria between heaven and earth, it was remarked that, wherever she might be, she immediately fell upon her knees as if insensible to the incommodiousness of the place.

The Rosary was her only book; and to her this devotion was no vain repetition. "Love," says Lacordaire, "has but one word, and, in saying that for ever, it is never repeated."

"Ever transformed to meet our needs.
Oft as Devotion counts her beads,
As if those beads had caught the light
In her celestial girdle bright,
But each with its own colors dight.
Thus, whensoe'er that prayer is heard,
Fresh thoughts are in each solemn word:
An orb of light comes from the skies
To kindle holy liturgies;
It gathers and gives back their rays.
Now turned to prayer, and now to praise."

The love of God insensibly leads to the love of one's neighbor. Germaine, when she could, used to draw around her the little children of the village, and endeavor to explain to them the truths of religion, and sweetly persuade them to love Jesus and Mary. This little school, held in the shade of a thicket of the lone fields, was a spectacle worthy of the admiration of angels, and is a proof of the unselfishness of real piety, even in the most lowly.

Although the piety of Germaine produced a profound impression in the village, yet the world is the same everywhere, and always conceives a secret aversion to piety. It cannot avoid censuring it in some way, however unobtrusive a piety it may be. Religion imposes esteem upon the world, and the world avenges itself by raillery. So the wits of Pibrac persecuted Germaine with mockery; they laughed at her simplicity, and called her a bigot.

But if God permits, for the perfection of the saints, that their virtue be turned into ridicule, he knows, when it pleaseth him, how to render them glorious in the eyes of the world.

In order to reach the village church, Germaine was obliged to pass the Courbet, a stream she generally crossed without difficulty in ordinary weather; but after heavy rains, it was too wide and deep to be passed on foot. One morning, as she was going to church, according to her custom, some peasants who saw her afar off stopped at a distance, and asked one another in a tone of mockery how she would pass the stream, now so swollen by the rain that the most vigorous man could hardly have stemmed the torrent. Dreaming of no obstacle, and perhaps not seeing any, Germaine approached as if none existed. ... O wonder of divine power and goodness! As of old the waters of the Red Sea opened for the passage of the children of Israel, so those of the Courbet divided before the humble daughter of Lawrence Cousin, and she passed through without wetting even the edge of her garments. At the sight of this miracle, afterward often repeated, the peasants looked at one another with fear; and from that time the boldest began to respect the simple maiden whom they had hitherto scoffed at.

After having thus glorified the faith of Germaine by dissipating the material obstacles to the performance of her duty, God wished also to glorify her charity to the poor.

If any one could believe himself exempted from the obligation of charity and alms-giving, it was certainly our shepherdess. She had no superfluities; she lacked even the necessaries of life. What was there, then, to retrench, in her life of extreme privation and severe penance? How economize the reward of her labor, which consisted only of a little bread and water? But charity is ingenious; and, seeing only our suffering Lord in the person of the poor, Germaine often deprived herself of a part of the bread which was allowed for her nourishment, doubly glad to give it to the hungry, and increase the treasure of her privations. Such are the deeds of the saints which will one day reproach us with terrible power! What will the rich man say when he beholds, rising up to confront his hardness of heart, the alms of Lazarus!

The pious liberality of Germaine made her an object of suspicion to her step-mother, who, not divining her resources, accused her of stealing bread from the house. One day she learned that Germaine, who had just gone with the flock, carried in her apron some pieces of bread. Furious, and armed with a cudgel, she immediately ran after her. Some of the other inhabitants of Pibrac happened to be on their way at this very moment to the house of Lawrence Cousin. Seeing this woman almost beside herself with passion, they divined her intentions, and hastened to protect Germaine from the ill treatment with which she was menaced. Overtaking the step-mother, they learned the cause of her anger. Finding Germaine, she seized her apron, and instead of bread, it was filled with bouquets of roses, although it was a season when those flowers were not in bloom. Thus God confounded the malice of her implacable enemy by renewing a miracle, likewise wrought in favor of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and other saints.

From this time, Germaine was regarded as a saint. Lawrence Cousin, conceiving more tender sentiments toward this pious child whom he had so little known, forbade his wife's annoying her any more, and wished to give her a place in his house with the other children. But Germaine, accustomed to suffering and loving privation, besought him to leave her in the obscure place which her step-mother had assigned her.

It was now that Germaine attained and proved the perfection of her humility. We must not consider it a trifling honor to have been esteemed at Pibrac; nor a small reward to have had a place at the fireside of Lawrence Cousin. Human nature is the same everywhere. There is no theatre too small for ambition. We know there are as many cabals for the first place in a village as for the chief place in an empire.

Perhaps it may not be entirely useless to speak of the exterior of the blessed Germaine. The manners and customs of the remote provinces of France retain so much of primitive simplicity, they change so little year after year, and the people in these localities have such a marked appearance, that we may form a reasonable idea of her person and habits.

She is represented in paintings and engravings as we see scores of shepherdesses in the south of France at this day—seated on a hillock in the fields, and surrounded by her flock. With a spindle in her hand, and under her arm the distaff laden with flax, she is spinning, after the primitive manner of that country. She is rather below the medium size, and is slight in form. She has the long head of the Toulousains, and their dark, Spanish complexion and eyes. The face, half hidden by the picturesque scarlet capuchon, is expressive of silence, interior silence; and forcibly speaks of the deep, deep calm within. A pleasing sadness, or rather a subdued joy, veils her face. There is an introspective look about the eyes which shows that her spirit has passed the bounds of sense, and is concentrated in one mysterious thought—some dream of a heavenly world. Sitting alone, away from her kind, her thoughts were pure and holy and bright, like the fragrant flowers of her own green meadows. She must have seemed to the other peasants like some phantom of unearthly love, as she sat there enveloped in a divine ethereal atmosphere. In the distance rise the towers of the church, and the antique château of the Lords of Pibrac, and between murmurs the Courbet. Over all, is the sunlight of her own bright clime.

Perhaps the miracle of the roses is the most popular representation of Saint Germaine, as something not quite so unearthly. There is no mystery about the look of the fierce step-mother, as with one hand she raises the cudgel over the head of the resigned-looking girl, and with the other grasps the apron from which tumble out the bright and fragrant flowers. The face of Germaine is somewhat sad, and her eyes are cast down in fear to the earth. Tremulous and mute she stands before her step-mother, for she is humble and sore afraid. There is a reflective charm about her of which she is wholly unconscious, for it emanates from that spiritual beauty visible only to the intelligences and bright ardors around the throne.

Saint Germaine died soon after the miracle of the roses. Almighty God, having sanctified her by humiliations and sufferings, withdrew her from this world when men, becoming more just, began to render her the honor her virtue merited. She terminated her obscure and hidden life by a similar death, but according to appearance this terrible moment, which confounds human arrogance, gave her no terror or pain.

One morning, Lawrence Cousin, not seeing her come out as usual, went to call her where she slept—under the stairs. She made no reply. He entered and found her upon her bed of vine-branches. She had fallen asleep while at prayer. God had called her to enjoy the reward of eternal life. She had ceased to suffer.

It was about the commencement of the summer of the year 1601 that Saint Germaine entered into the joy of her Lord. She was twenty-two years of age.

That same night two pious men were overtaken near Pibrac by the darkness of night, and obliged to await the return of day in a neighboring forest. All at once, in the middle of the night, the woods were flooded with a light more brilliant than the dawn, and a company of virgins, clothed in white garments and surrounded by a dazzling light, floated by on the darkness toward the house of Lawrence Cousin. Soon after they returned, but there was another in their midst—more radiant still—who had on her head a chaplet of fresh flowers. ...

People came in crowds to her funeral, wishing to honor her whom they had too long despised, whom too late they had known. This was the first testimony of public veneration. Her body was buried in the church in front of the pulpit. Forty-three years after, it was found entire and preserved from corruption. It had been embalmed with her virginal purity. In her hands were a taper and a garland of pinks and heads of grain. The flowers had scarcely faded. The grain was fresh as at the time of harvest.

The holy body was removed and finally placed in the sacristy, where people of all ranks, incited by the wonders wrought at her tomb, came to offer their homage.

In 1843, more than four hundred legally attested miracles had been wrought at her shrine, and so excited the faith of the people in her power before God, that the Archbishop of Toulouse, and nearly all the other prelates of France, petitioned the Holy See for her beatification. It had been desired before the French Revolution, but it was not attempted till the time of Gregory XVI.

When the commissioners went to examine the condition of the remains of the venerable Germaine, a most extraordinary scene took place. The inhabitants of Pibrac, thinking that the beatification of their shepherdess might terminate in the loss of their holy treasure, came in a body to the door of the church. They received the commissioners with threats and even with stones, so it was only with difficulty an entrance could be effected into the church. The furious multitude followed, and the examination was made in the midst of a frightful tumult. "No! no!" was heard on all sides. "No beatification. St. Germaine cures us when we are sick; that is enough. She belongs to us. We wish to keep her."

The brief for the beatification of Germaine Cousin was issued by the order of his holiness Pius IX., on the 1st of July, 1853.

The Triduo which was held at Pibrac, in 1854, in honor of this event, manifested the joy and the faith of the people. Altars, lighted up by the bright sun of France, were erected in the fields once trod by the feet of Germaine, so that hundreds of Masses could be offered at once. The whole country around poured in. Toulouse seemed vacated. There were eighty thousand persons assembled around that shrine. On the first day there were fourteen thousand communicants. In the procession were eighteen hundred young ladies robed in white. They all held white lilies in one hand, and wax tapers in the other, and as they entered the church and passed the altar, they deposited their tapers on one side and their lilies on the other. Conspicuous in the procession were those who had been healed by the intervention of the holy shepherdess. Lights were in their hands, and they made an offering of gratitude at the altar.

The house in which the blessed Germaine had lived was endangered during those days of religious triumph. It was in a tolerable state of preservation, but every one seemed anxious to secure a portion of the walls that once sheltered her, and especially of the spot sanctified by the angel of death.

A resident in the south of France at the time of the beatification of Saint Germaine, as she was even then, with one accord, called in that country, I was forcibly impressed with the enthusiastic veneration and confidence with which she was regarded by all classes. Every week I heard of some new miracle at her tomb; so they soon ceased to excite wonder, and seemed to belong to the established order of events. There was scarcely an individual in my circle of acquaintance who had not been, at least once, to prostrate himself at her shrine, and there was a lively faith in her protection, which proved to me how strongly the spirit of the middle ages still animates the hearts of the faithful.

So popular a devotion was a novelty to me—a "native American"—but I could not long remain insensible to its influence. One misty October day found me likewise an humble pilgrim at the shrine of the holy shepherdess of Pibrac.

The very air of that antique chapel inspires devotion. A supernatural influence seemed to impregnate everything around me. I saw, too, that I was not the only one who felt this subtle influence penetrating to the very heart; for the faces of all the pilgrims, priests, religious, and laymen of every rank who are constantly arriving and departing, were indicative of a holy awe. Though I got there at a late hour, and it was raining, Masses were still being celebrated, and the church was full. It was no festival. It was so every day. Masses were said at every altar from early dawn till the latest canonical hour. Prostrate groups from different parishes were always there, clustered in the nave, or gathered about the shrine; and here and there were lone pilgrims who, like me, had been brought from the ends of the earth. And around and over all were constellations of brightly burning tapers, emblematic of the prayer of faith, left there by the pilgrim as loth he slowly left the hallowed sanctuary.

The tomb of Saint Germaine is in a side chapel, protected by a grate. Her relics are covered with gold and silver and precious stones, ex votes, which gleam in the light of the votive candles around. Involuntarily there comes to the heart in this fitting place, and to the lips, the strain, Exaltavit humiles!

"Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick!" is the cry of every weary, sin-laden heart; above all here, where thou dost love to display thy goodness and thy power. The sacred heart of thy humanity, ever touched with feeling for our infirmities, is not hardened. It is still as tender and as compassionate as when thou didst weep over the grave at Bethany, and thy hand is as powerful. I believe that thou, who art honored in thy saints, dost heal here both soul and body of those who approach thee with faith and with love, especially with love. "Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much," was uttered centuries ago, but has been repeated times without number since, over penitent, loving souls. O power of love over the divine heart! It is only the cold, the feeble in faith, who have no power to draw from this inexhaustible well of compassion.

If every Catholic heart were, as it should be, a chapelle ardente, all aflame with the love of God, how soon would the spiritual infirmities of entire humanity be healed, and the wounds of Christ's bleeding body be bound up!

Reader! let the aspiration of divine love, indulgenced by our sovereign pontiff on the 7th of May, 1854, in honor of the beatification of Germaine Cousin, be often on our lips and in our hearts: "Jesu, Deus MEUS, AMO TE SUPER OMNIA!" Jesus, my God, I love thee above all things!

From The Latin Of Prudentius.
An Elegy.

Aurelics Prudentius Clemens, the glory of the early Christian poets, was born in Spain in the year 348. He studied eloquence in his youth under a celebrated master. He was twice made governor of provinces and cities, raised to the highest rank, and placed at the court by the Emperor Theodosius I., next in dignity to his own person.

But in the vigor of his age, he quitted worldly honors and employments, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and thence returning to Spain, led a secluded life, consecrating his leisure to the composition of sacred poems. He is esteemed the most learned of the Christian poets, and, for the sweetness and elegance of his verses, has been compared to Horace.

Venient citò saecula, quum jam
Socius calor ossa revisat,
Animataque sanguine vivo
Habitacula pristina gestet.

Quae pigra cadavera pridem
Tumulis putrefacta jacebant,
Volucres rapientur in auras,
Animas comitata priores.

Quid turba superstes inepta
Plangens ululamina miscet?
Cur tam bene condita jura,
Luctu dolor arguit amens?

Jam moesta quiesce querela,
Lacrymas suspendite matres,
Nullus sua pignora plangat:
Mors haec reparatio vitae est.

Sic semina sicca virescunt
Jam mortua, jamque sepulta,
Quae reddita cespite ab imo
Veteres meditantur aristas.

Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,
Gremioque hunc concipe molli;
Hominis tibi membra sequestro,
Generosa et fragmina credo.

Animae fuit haec domus olim
Factoris ab ore create;
Fervens habitavit in istis
Sapientia, principe Christo.

Tu depositum tege corpus;
Non immemor ille requiret
Sua munera fictor et auctor,
Propriique aenigmata vultûs.

Veniant modò tempora justa,
Quum spem Deus impleat omnem;
Reddas patefacta necesse est,
Qualem tibi trado figuram.

Non si cariosa vetustas
Dissolverit ossa favillis,
Fueritque cinisculus arens,
Minimi mensura pugilli;

Nee si vaga flamina, et aurae
Vacuum per inane volantes
Tulerint cum pulvere nervos,
Hominem periisse licebit.

Translation.

The hour is speeding on amain
When back into its olden form,
Once more with ruddy life-blood warm,
The spirit shall return again.

The freed soul soars aloft through space:
So, dust with dust, aloft through air,
This heavy clay swift gales shall bear
From its sepulchral resting-place..

Why doth the crowd surviving fill
The air with a lamenting vain?
Why with such idle griefs arraign
The justice of the Eternal will?

Oh! end these pangs with murmurs rife,
O mothers! cease your tears, your woe;
Weep not for your dead children so,
Death the renewal is of life.

The dead, dry seed lies hid from view,
To burst forth to new glorious bloom;
The former beauty to resume,
The ancient harvest to renew.

O earth! in thy soft bosom keep,
And quicken with new warmth this clay,
This sacred frame to rest we lay.
It smiles in thy embrace to sleep.

'Twas once the immortal spirit's cell.
That breath breathed from the lips divine;
Here was the living wisdom's shrine,
Here deigned the Christ supreme to dwell.

Guard it beneath thy faithful sod,
For He, one day, will re-demand
From thee this labor of his hand.
This breathing likeness of its God.

Oh! for the appointed hour to rend
The grave! the hope God gives is sure:
Safe, beauteous, through these gates obscure
What now descendeth shall ascend.

Yes, though this frame divinely planned
Be wasted by decay and rust,
And naught left save a little dust.
The filling of the smallest hand:

Though these strong sinews ashes be
On wandering breezes wafted wide,
Inviolate ever shall abide
The mortal's immortality.

C. E. B.

Translated From Der Katholik.
The Ancient Irish Church.

The history of the ancient Irish church, for many reasons, claims our respectful attention. In the time of the migration of the European races, this church had a great mission to accomplish among the Germanic tribes. When the Goths had overrun Spain, the Franks and Burgundians conquered Gaul, the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain, the Vandals spoiled Africa, and the Lombards gained strongholds in Italy; when the Alemanni and Sueves had penetrated into the valleys and claimed the mountains of ancient Helvetia; who was it in those stormy times that elevated the moral condition of those peoples, drew them out of the darkness of German paganism, or converted them from Arianism; regenerated them internally, civilized and incorporated them into the kingdom of God, after they had devastated the provinces of the Western empire, leaving ruins, deserts, confusion, and desolation behind them in their plundering march? It was the missionaries of the ancient Irish church that rescued Europe from the barbarism of that period. Evidently sent by God, those Irish missionaries founded new Christian colonies in different lands, hewed down the forests, civilized the deserts, founded churches, schools, and monasteries. As the Roman empire without the barbarians was nothing but an abyss of slavery and rottenness, so would the barbarians have been a wild chaos without the monks. The monks and barbarians combined produced a new world which we call Christendom.

Germany also owes much to the missionaries of the ancient Irish church. In the olden time Ireland was called the "island of saints and sages;" as her people in our days receive from us the honorable title of "martyr-nation of the west," for their inflexible fidelity to their faith during three centuries of shameless and brutal persecution. "No one but God in heaven knows the number of the saints whose dust is mingled with Irish soil," wrote one of the oldest Irish writers, the biographer of St. Ailbe of Emly. We count, not by hundreds, but by thousands, the holy Irish bishops, abbots, priests, monks, and virgins. Even in the days of St. Patrick, and still more after his successful apostolate, Ireland was not only a great training-school for foreign missionaries, but a second Thebais, in which the exercises of the spiritual life were thoroughly practised, and where students could devote themselves in solitude to the study of philosophy and holy writ under the ablest professors. Pious men went from Britain, from the European continent, from France, and even from Rome, to the classic and holy "island of saints," to learn the doctrines of Christian perfection, literature, and theology, in the renowned monasteries of the land of Columba and Colombanus.

Even to this day Ireland is specially favored by God. There are no snakes in it or other venomous reptiles. The very dangerous portion of the animal kingdom is entirely excluded from its sacred ground; and all attempts to naturalize poisonous creatures there have been unsuccessful. The old Irish rhyme reads:

"St. Patrick was a holy man,
He was a saint so clever,
He gave the snakes and toads his ban,
And drove them out for ever."

Throughout Ireland there are great fields of wheat and grain of every description, and many lakes. The climate is mild, and snow so rare that cattle can graze in the fields all the year round. Rain showers are frequent, and give such fertility and verdure to the soil as no other land in Europe possesses, so that the island is known as "Green Erin," or the "Emerald isle." The plants, flowers, and trees of Ireland, in their shape, color, and material, remind one somewhat of Normandy in France, or of Asturia in northern Spain.

The History of the Ancient Irish Church has been just presented to the public by an author who is in a better condition than most of his contemporaries to write such a work, which charms us more and more the more frequently we read it. We speak of the recent work of the Bishop of St. Gall, Dr. Charles John Greith, in which we recognize one of the greatest efforts of German historical literature. We cannot, therefore, refrain from imparting to our readers an epitome of the contents of this remarkable and highly interesting production. The right reverend author considers his work of four hundred and sixty-two pages as an "Introduction to the history of the Bishopric of St. Gall." He published the book on the commemoration and centenary of the consecration of the cathedral of St. Gall, August 17th and 18th, 1867, and dedicated his literary effort to the chapter and the clergy of his diocese. From early youth the distinguished author has been familiar with the legends and history of St. Gall, and studied them with love and veneration. Love for that great Irish missionary saint, whose worthy successor Dr. Greith is, inspired the work whose continuation we desire most earnestly. "St. Gall has left behind him a world-wide reputation as the apostle of the Swiss Alps. Centuries have not diminished his fame, which the gratitude of Christians sanctions."

Veneration for St. Gall has been spread far beyond the boundaries of Switzerland; from the foot of the Alps to Upper Burgundy and Alsace, even to the limits of the Vosges; then into Brisgau and the Black Forest, to the Suabian Alps, and thence into Nibelgau, and Algau. In all these regions, the monks of St. Gall imparted the blessings of religion and education. Full of admiration for the Christian zeal of St. Gall and his disciples, our author recalls the words spoken by Ermenreich of Reichenau, to Abbot Grimald of St. Gall, over a thousand years ago: "How could we ever forget the island of Ireland, from which the rays of Christian light and the sun of Christian faith have shone upon us!" Taking this expression for his motto, the right reverend writer gives us his magnificent History of the Ancient Irish Church and its Connection with Rome, Gaul, and Germany.

Divided into six books, the work describes in the two first the migrations of the barbarians and the fall of the Roman empire; then the heresies which swarmed in the church of the period; then the school of the island of Lerins, where St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was instructed. The four last books are consecrated to St. Patrick and his apostleship in Ireland; to St. Columba, the apostle of Scotland; to St. Colombanus and his deeds in France, Flanders, and the north of Italy; and to St. Gall, the apostle of Germany. The sixth and last book treats of Christianity and its customs in the Irish church.

The illustrious author made use of manuscripts as well as printed works in the compilations of his history. Many manuscripts were at his disposal in St. Gall itself. The original sources of ancient Irish history consist of different materials; genealogies which trace the origin of kings or saints and their relatives; annals which give the year of the death of saints, or of other distinguished characters; church calendars which give the day of the month on which the death of a saint occurred; and finally, the lives of the saints themselves. These biographies are copiously used. We cannot restrain our desire to quote what the author thinks of those sources of history. "Erudition is not sufficient for us to judge the biographies of the ancient saints; we must have sympathy with them in their zealous labor; and a spiritual relationship in their faith. Every age must be judged according to the ideas, and customs which prevail in it; and every saint according to the circumstances in which he lives." The poetic as well as the historical element, the legendary as well as the authentic, must be combined in forming a correct estimate of a saint's character.

Even in the early part of the middle ages, every cathedral church, large monastery, or distinguished hermitage, possessed its hagiographers, who wrote the lives of the saints of the place, either from authentic written documents, traditions, or from knowledge acquired as eye-witnesses. Since John Moschus published his collection of legends, extraordinary diligence in the criticism and sifting of the ancient biographies of the saints has been manifested in the church. The collection and critical works of the Bollandists, of Lurius, Mabillon, d'Achery, and others, keep their reputation undiminished to the present day. These writers display such a thoroughness in their researches, that the modern rationalists have been unable to find a flaw of any consequence in their criticism. The truthful historian must describe those apostles of religion and civilization among the Germans, such as they were, children of their century, representatives of its ideas, views, and manners. Following this method, he will not cast doubt on the purity of their motives, or try to lessen their merit in drawing entire nations of barbarians out of the darkness of paganism and immorality into the light of Christianity and virtue. The blind party spirit of our times recognizes no justice, and modern paganism is only satisfied when it can throw everything that is noble and holy out of history. The modern pagans tear with scorn the Holy Scriptures into shreds before our eyes, and subject to a lawless criticism the ablest records of ecclesiastical history, while they try to overturn every monument that might shelter the weary pilgrims of earth on their road to heaven.

II.

The most trustworthy documents regarding the first traces of Christianity in Ireland, inform us that up to the time of Pope Celestine I., (a.d. 422-432,) that country had not been converted. Up to the year of our Lord 432, no Christian missionary had trodden the soil of the island, or caused the light of faith to shine over the hills and through the valleys of green Erin. Palladius and Patrick were the first apostles, (A.D. 430.) It is true, several High-Church English writers have endeavored to prove the establishment of an Irish church prior to St. Patrick; but this theory is unsupported by any authentic documents. Besides, the attempt of those writers was prompted by the partisan desire of proving an original separation in belief between Ireland and Rome. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that many non-commissioned Christians may have gone from Britain and Gaul into Ireland before the year 430, and formed small communities, or lived scattered among the heathens. "On the wings of every day commerce, the flower-seeds of Christian faith must have been borne to Erin from Britain and Gaul; as from the earliest times direct business relations were kept up between Nantes, other harbors of Armoric Gaul, and Ireland. To the north-west of Gaul also came the Irish rovers, under the guidance of some distinguished chieftain, in quest of plunder, and frequently carried off Christians into captivity. In this way St. Patrick, when a youth of sixteen years of age, was taken from the coast of Armorica by the pirates of King Niall, and with many thousand others detained in bondage, as he informs us himself in his writings," (p. 86.)

Besides the fact that there was no Irish church prior to St. Patrick, though there may have been individual Christians in the country, we must prove that the Christianity imported into Ireland was Roman, and that her apostles received their mission from the pope. Pope Celestine, in the year 431, sent Palladius, deacon or arch-deacon of the Roman church, as the first missionary. This apostolic man, who had long been casting his eyes toward Britain and the other western islands of Europe, had a double and very important task to execute in Ireland, namely, to strengthen the dispersed Catholics in the faith, and to evangelize the heathens. He landed in Hay-Garrchon, penetrated into the interior of the country, baptized many, built three churches in the province of Leinster; but, taken altogether, his mission was unsuccessful, and he met with much opposition. "But when Palladius understood that he could not do much good in Ireland, he wanted to return to Rome, and died on the voyage, in the territory of the Picts. Others say that he received the crown of martyrdom in Ireland."

What Palladius begun—but which God's providence willed to remain incomplete—Patrick accomplished in sixty years of apostolic labor. Him God chose as the instrument, and fitted him for this holy work. That he received his commission from Rome from the hands of Pope Celestine, A.D. 432, cannot be doubted; for the fact is confirmed by a crowd of witnesses, both Roman and Irish. We must, therefore, consider and reverence Patrick as the apostle of the Irish people.

All the early Irish annalists unanimously agree that his mission began in the year 432, and that he died in 493—an apostleship of sixty years! How great and glorious for him and for his people!

Patrick was born A.D. 387, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in modern Picardy, and was of noble Roman origin. In his sixteenth year, in a marauding expedition of an Irish clan called Niall, he was carried prisoner to Armoric Gaul; thence to Ireland, and there sold to a pagan officer named Milcho, whose swine he herded for six years. After this, he escaped, and returned to his native land. Having fully determined to consecrate himself to the service of God, he went to Marmontiers, the monastery of St. Martin of Tours, to study there the principles of Christian science and perfection. A few years after, he visited the happy island of Lerins, near Marseilles, at that time one of the most famous schools in Christendom, and met there, as fellow-students, the holy monks Honoratus, Hilary, Eucherius, Lupus, and others. An interior voice there told him that he should return to Ireland to preach the Gospel in that country; and he therefore travelled from Lerins to Rome, in order to represent to the holy see the darkness of heathenism which brooded over Ireland. But, as the apostolic see was not then in a condition to provide for the Irish mission, Patrick went back to Gaul, and remained with St. Germain of Auxerre, under whose guidance he made further progress in holiness and learning. Such was his life up to the year 429.

In this year he accompanied Bishop Germanus and Lupus to Britain, who were sent by the pope to root out Pelagianism in that country. Thus was Patrick prepared for his apostleship.

It was then he heard of the mission of Palladius, and its failure. (A.D. 431.) The holy Bishop Germanus cast his eyes on Patrick, who knew the Irish language, people, and country from personal observations. Did he not seem peculiarly fitted—sent, in fact, from heaven, to undertake the conversion of the Irish nation?

Patrick, therefore, with the priest Legetius as his companion, went to Rome, and received from Pope Celestine his blessing and the necessary authority to undertake the task of converting Ireland. It is hard to tell now whether he was consecrated bishop by Celestine before his departure, or by Bishop Amatorex, of Eboria, a city in north-western Gaul. He reached Ireland in the first year of Celestine III. A life of continual triumphs began for him. He was repulsed from the coast of Dublin: no matter; he sailed for Ulster, and landed at Strangford. He converts the chieftain Dicho and his whole house, and celebrates his first Mass in Ireland in a neighboring barn. At the royal city of Tara, he meets King Leoghaire, with all his clan; defends and explains Christianity in their presence, and gains a victory over the Druids. Dublach, a Druid and poet, is converted, and sings, for the future, only hymns in the honor of the true God. The daughters of the king, Ethana and Fethlimia, also bow to the yoke of the Gospel, and consecrate their virginity to God, and many other holy women follow their example. Thus, a happy beginning was made in the island.

Soon the converts number thousands. Everything succeeds; the conversion of the Irish people was effected without persecution or martyrs. Patrick frequented the national assemblies, and used the occasion to preach to the multitudes. He destroyed idolatry and idolatrous practices throughout the whole land, and built churches to the living God on places that had hitherto been dedicated to the worship of idols. Wherever he went, he baptized crowds of men, provided the new Christian communities with churches, made the most virtuous of his disciples priests and bishops, and appointed them to govern the faithful, and extend the reign of the Gospel.

Thus did he labor year after year, going about preaching, baptizing, and blessing, in Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught; and everywhere his astonishing activity and self sacrifice effected wonderful results. Everywhere the people were ready and docile for the reception of Christianity. Divine Providence wonderfully protected him from all danger.

But when the whole island was converted to Christ, congregations formed, and churches erected in all parts of the country, St. Patrick thought of building a metropolitan cathedral for the primate of Ireland. He chose for this purpose the heights of Admarcha, or Armagh, near which stood the old royal fortress of Emania. After the building of his cathedral and the conversion of the Irish, St. Patrick passed the remaining years of his life partly at Armagh, partly at his favorite spot at Sabhul, where he began his missionary career. He assembled a few synods, wrote his Confession, as it is called, on the approach of death, and was attacked by his last illness at Sabhul. When he felt his end approaching, he collected his remaining strength, and endeavored to go to Armagh, which he had chosen as the place of his burial; but, warned by a voice from heaven, he returned to Sabhul, and died there eight days after, on the 17th of March, 493.

III.

Let us now glance at the disciples and followers of this great man. They followed up his work with such zeal and indefatigable activity that, at the end of the sixth century, Christianity was spread over all Ireland. We distinguish, in the Irish church, "Fathers of the First Order," and "Fathers of the Second Order." The holy men from Rome, Italy, Gaul, and especially from Wales or Cambria, who followed St. Patrick as their leader, and aided him in his labors, are the "Fathers of the First Order." Patrick brought with him from Rome, in the year 432, nine assistants; in the year 439, Secundinus, Auxilius, and Iserninus, were sent to him from Rome. The two former of these, together with Benignus, were present as bishops at the first synod of Armagh, in the year 456. Bishop Trianius, a Roman, another disciple of St. Patrick, imitated so exactly the life of the great apostle, that his food was nothing but the milk of one cow, which he took care of himself. The first mitred abbot of Sabhul was Dunnius; and the first bishop of Antrim was Leoman, Patrick's nephew. The oldest Irish bishops appointed by Patrick, were Patrick of Armagh, Fiech of Sletty, Mochua of Aendrun, Carbreus of Cubratham, and Maccarthen, of Aurghialla. Seven nephews of St. Patrick, who followed him from Cambria, are invoked in the Irish litanies as bishops. They are the sons of Tigriada, Brochad, Brochan, Mogenoch, Luman; and the sons of Darercha, Mel, Rioch, and Muna. When the heathen Anglo-Saxons conquered Britain in the year 450, and sought to destroy the old British church, many learned and pious men fled to Ireland, and joined Patrick. Thirty of them were made bishops, and devoted themselves to the special task of converting the neighboring islands. The most renowned of these Welsh missionaries are Carantoc, Mochta of Lugmagh, and Modonnoc, who introduced the rearing of bees into Ireland, where they had never been seen before. Three companions of St. Patrick—Essa, Bitmus, and Tesach—were expert bell-founders, and makers of church-vessels. The fact that Patrick was sent from Rome, that his first assistants were Romans, and that his co-laborers from Gaul and Britain were sons of the Roman church, completely destroys the Anglican hypothesis of an Irish church independent of Rome. Even Albeus, who, on account of his services, was called the second Patrick, Declau, and Ihac, the apostles of the Mumons; Enna, or Enda, the founder of the great monastery of Aran; Condland, Bishop of Kildare, all disciples of St. Patrick, were educated and consecrated bishops in Rome. There also were Lugach, Colman, Meldan, Lugaidh, Cassan, and Ciaran, consecrated and afterward numbered among the earliest bishops and fathers of the Irish church.

From the time of St. Patrick, continual communication was kept up between Rome and Ireland by countless pilgrims, as many documents attest, (Greith, p. 142-156.) Patrick left his love and reverence for the Apostolic See of Peter as a precious legacy to his immediate disciples; and they, in turn, to their successors up to the present day. The frequent pilgrimages of Irish bishops, abbots, and monks, are facts so well proven, that the Anglican theory of a separate Irish church is shown to be a pure invention, no longer contended for as truth by any respectable historian.

Let us now pass to the fathers of the second order in the Irish church, and their illustrious foundations. The founders of those numerous Irish monasteries, which counted their inmates by hundreds and thousands, those men who were mostly brought up by the immediate successors of St. Patrick, belong to the "Second Order of Irish Fathers." Twelve of them, instructed by the renowned Abbot Finnian, at Clonard, are called the twelve apostles of Ireland. At their head stands Columba, the apostle of the Picts, shining among them like the sun among the stars. Their names are, Columba, of Iona, Corngall, of Bangor, Cormac, of Deormagh, Cainech, of Achedbo, Ciaran, of Clonmacnoise, Mobhi, of Clareinech, Brendan, of Clonfert, Brendan, of Birr, Fintan, Columba, of Tirgelass, Molua Fillan and Molasch, of Damhs-Inis. These holy men erected all over Ireland and in the adjacent isles churches and convents, which became centres of art, learning, and sanctity. The monastery of Clonard, founded in Meath by Abbot Finnian, contained during his lifetime three thousand monks. At Clonmacnoise, a monastery founded by St. Ciaran, in the middle of Ireland, agriculture was made a special study; and Monastereven on the Barrow, Monasterboyce in the valley of the Boyne, Dearmach, etc., were renowned institutions. These first and oldest Irish monasteries were not large, regularly-built houses, but composed of numbers of separate cells or huts, made of wicker-work, stalks, and rushes. The church or oratory stood in the midst of the huts, and was made of the same material. It was at a later period that the Roman architecture was introduced into Ireland; and then stone edifices took the place of the primitive structures. Special mention is always made in the Irish annals of the erection of a stone church, for the people preferred wooden buildings, and their preference shows itself up to the twelfth century. The stone churches were looked upon as the fruit of foreign architecture, as St. Bernard informs us in his life of St. Malachy. The Roman church gradually introduced into Ireland the fine arts and a higher order of architecture, as she had done at an earlier date in Gaul and Britain. Choral singing became usual. The church hymns took the place of the Druidical rhapsodies; and the muses of Inisfail forgot to sing of heroes, and learned to tune their harps to sing the praise of Christ and his saints.

The Irish missionaries reclaimed barren lands and made them fertile, ameliorated the condition of agriculture, spread commerce, and discovered new islands in the sea. Many of the Irish saints, at the period of which we are writing, were great navigators.

Dr. Greith paints in glowing colors the life of St. Columba and his labors in Ireland, the Hebrides, and Scotland, as well as the discipline and rules of the Abbey of Hy, which was founded by him. We cannot enter into details, but refer the reader to Dr. Greith's book. Columba was born on the 7th of December, 521. In the first half of his life, Ireland was the scene of his zeal; the second half was spent among the Scots and Picts. In Ireland he founded Durrow, Derry, and Kells. He went with twelve disciples to Caledonia in the year 563. Christianity among the Scots had degenerated; and the Picts were still pagans. The king of the Picts, Brudrius, gave him the island of Iona or Hy, where his works began which God crowned with wonderful success. He soon became the beacon light for all the faithful priests and laity of Ireland and Caledonia. He visited Ireland to counsel his noble relatives, settle their disputes, or oversee the churches and monasteries which he had established, and travelled among the Picts preaching the Gospel, founding monasteries, and erecting churches which should consider Iona as their mother. He built thirty-two churches, to most of which monasteries were attached, in Scotland; and eighteen among the Picts, in the space of thirty-three years, (563-597.) Even during his lifetime he was so celebrated that, from all sides, princes, nobles, bishops, priests, monks, and the faithful of all classes ran to him for counsel in their difficulties, consolation in their distress, and help in their necessities. Columba fought against the superstition of the Picts, the cunning of their magicians, and the wickedness of lawless men. Princes' sons, whose fathers had lost their lives and crowns in battle, went to Iona to lay their grievances before Columba, and to each one according to his need, the saint gave consolation and hope. The common people brought their children to him, to ask him to decide their vocation. It was not an unusual spectacle to see kings and nobles lay aside the insignia of their greatness at Iona, and break their swords before its altars. Columba's prayers were very powerful. His blessing controlled the elements and the forces of nature. He seemed to rule nature as a lord. He had also the gift of prophecy. He died June 9th, A.D. 597. His departure from life was made known to many holy men in different parts of Ireland and Scotland at the same time, who declared that "Columba, the pillar of so many churches, had gone to-night to the bosom of his Redeemer." The isle of Iona was illuminated by a heavenly light, emanating from the countless angels who came down to take up the happy soul of the saint to the bosom of his God.

The Irish monasteries increased wonderfully during the sixth century. Finnian's monastery at Clonard, as already mentioned, contained 3000 monks; and that of Bangor and Birr had the same number; St. Molaissi had 1500 monks around him; Colombanus and Fechin had each 300; Carthach, 867; Gobban, 1000; Maidoc, Manchan, Natalis, and Ruadhan, each 150; Revin and Molua were each the head of several thousand. There was no common rule for all those convents, like that which St. Benedict wrote for the religious of his order, (A.D. 529.) Each monastery had its own laws. Columba had made no special rule for Hy or for his other monasteries. St. Colombanus was the first who collected and methodized the customs and traditions of Irish monastic life.

A thorough investigation of the most ancient custom of the Celtic church, proves that it was in communion with the church of Rome. The trivial differences between the two churches regarded neither dogma, nor morality, nor the essentials of the Liturgy, of the Mass, or the Blessed Sacrament. The supremacy of the pope was recognized by all the Irish; and the celibacy of the clergy observed as in the other Western churches. In the ceremonies of the Mass, it is true, there were certain usages and forms observed not Roman, as was the case also in the churches of Spain and Gaul. The rites of baptism in the Irish church were simpler than those of the Roman. The difference mainly consisted in the style of the tonsure and in the time of celebrating the Easter festival. The Irish and Britons did not keep the reckoning of the Abbot Dionysius the Little, as he is styled, regarding Easter, and tenaciously clung to the old Roman calculation. Every departure from it seemed to them contrary to the traditions of their fathers. It was only in the year 716, and after hard and bitter fighting, that perfect union between Rome and Ireland was effected in this particular.

The history of the Irish, as well as of the British church, is of the greatest importance for Germans who want to know the origin of Christianity in their own land. But we shall develop this point in a second article.

European Prison Discipline.

I. — Newgate.

We take pleasure in offering to American readers the following record of a visit to Newgate, as exhibiting the enlightened humanity shown in the treatment of public criminals in London. The guide whom we have selected as the interpreter of Newgate's mysteries is an imaginary personage. He expresses the impressions, thoughts, and comments of several persons, not the convictions of a single individual.

This way, sir, please. Yes, the passages do seem gloomy, coming in out of the sunny street, crowded with free men hurrying to and fro on business. Here we are in the kitchen; you see the good allowance of meat and potatoes the prisoners have for dinner four times a week; the other three days they have a good strong soup instead of meat; morning and night a mess of oatmeal, and with each meal half a pound of bread. Yes, they are well fed; better here, many of them, than they would be outside. Just look over your shoulder, sir. Through that low iron door behind you the condemned prisoners pass out into the square to be hanged. Why through the kitchen? Can't say, sir. It has always been so and that's all, I suppose. Do they take it quietly for the most part? Why—sometimes they give us a little trouble, but—yes, generally they bear it pretty well, poor fellows!

More narrow passages, with grated rooms like aviaries on each side. These are the apartments where the prisoners receive their friends, separated from them by two gratings several feet apart. It will remind you of the picture in Old Curiosity Shop, where Mrs. Nubbles and Barbara's mother go to see Kit in prison. A prisoner can receive a visit once in three months, write one letter, and receive one; but they are seldom here so long. Newgate is only a house of detention before trial, except for those condemned to death—a mere jail. Here we are in one of the great oblong halls with tiers of cells opening on to galleries. Up this iron staircase in the middle of the hall and across this little bridge, and we stand outside a cell door. In the American prisons you have seen, you say that the cells open on a corridor, with a grated door, and sometimes a grated window. Not so, here. The door is solid, with merely a small hole for purposes of surveillance, and a trap below it through which food, etc., may be passed. If the prisoner wants anything, he rings a bell, the action of which is curious. Fix your eye on the bell-spring outside. I pull the bell inside and a tin flap flies back, showing the number of the cell. Thus the officer knows what bell has rung, and the prisoner, having no power over the flap when it has once sprung back, cannot avoid discovery if he has rung merely in order to give trouble. The cell is sufficiently large, you see, and is lighted from the court-yard through that arched window near the ceiling. A nice little room enough, with the bedding stowed away on one of those shelves in the corner. On the shelf below is the prisoner's bowl with the spoon lying on it. Everything must be in its place. If the spoon were on the shelf, it would be out of place; it must lie on the reversed bowl. Resting against the wall is his plate, and on the lowest shelf are his books. Oh! yes, you may examine them—the same in all the cells, Bible, Prayer-Book, hymns, and psalms. [Footnote 222] The other volume comes from our library, and is changed every day, if necessary> At this little turn-up shelf the prisoner takes his meals, or reads by the small shade-lamp above it. In the corner is a nice copper basin with plenty of water. There are two apertures, one to admit warm air, the other for ventilation; every comfort provided for him, you see. Yes, we keep the prisoners entirely apart from each other, never two together, unless some one comes here for drunkenness, and has delirium tremens, and then we put two others with him for safety's sake. Now we'll go up to the next corridor; in the one below are the doctors' cells, where fresh prisoners are kept until they have passed through a sanitary examination.

[Footnote 222: Prisoners who do not belong to the Established Church can be visited by a priest or by a dissenting minister.]

Step into this cell, occupied, as you see, by a mere boy. There's his pile of oakum on the floor. Go on with your dinner, my man; no need to stop for us. As we go up higher, more light comes in from the courtyard; the upper cells are reserved for prisoners who are likely to be here some time. The next cell occupied too, you see, though we've not many prisoners here now, the trials being just over. Yes, sir, this man is trying to educate himself a little; has a dictionary on the shelf beside the library-book—a volume of travels this time. Now that we are in the corridor again, let me tell you that this same shock-headed young man is condemned to ten years of penal servitude and twenty lashes, for highway robbery with violence. The lashes are to be received before he leaves Newgate, but more on that subject presently.

Here we are in the old part of Newgate. In your reading, no doubt you've come across the name of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. It was in this same long, dark room that she used to assemble the prisoners, and read and pray with them. No, I have no means of judging of the durability of her conversions. It is easy to talk of converting criminals; but perhaps her chief merit lay in setting the example in England of a friendly and trusting intercourse with these poor wretches. Yes, it is strange to see the whipping-block in this room, but indeed, sir, corporal punishment has become an absolute necessity. It is never used to force prison discipline, but is administered in execution of a sentence, imposed by a magistrate for wanton violence. It is a curious fact that these brutes, who go about garroting inoffensive travellers, breaking jaws and skulls with their brass knuckles or dusters, as they call them, are the veriest cowards on earth when physical pain comes to themselves. In this very room they will cry like children, and beg to be forgiven, I don't feel half the pity for them that I do for the poor creatures going to be hanged. [Footnote 223] This iron door survived the fire in the Gordon riots, you see. Come through here, if you please, sir. This is another of the large rooms in old Newgate, where prisoners were kept before the solitary system came into vogue. The change is a most fortunate one for all concerned, I'm confident.

[Footnote 223: We are not fully convinced of the wisdom of introducing the whipping-block once more into the honorable company of penal inflictions in England. One of the most satisfactory cases of reformation we have known among persons guilty of grave crimes, was that of a "garroter." It is our strong impression that corporal punishment would have degraded him beyond all human hope of redemption. At least, great care should be taken to keep the use of this instrument of torture within the bounds of absolute necessity. Imprisonment may soften the heart; perhaps many persons have died well on the scaffold, who would have died impenitent under other circumstances; but however great may have been the number of spirits crushed by flogging in prisons, we venture to doubt whether there is a single instance on record of its having produced or aided reformation.]

I've no question that many a crime was hatched here among the men herded together in these cells. You can see for yourself what kind of talk there would be among them. Perhaps some footman was sent here for stealing his master's purse. What a chance for an old hand to get a little useful information in a friendly way: "Your master was an easy, comfortable kind of a man, was he? Well, them well-to-do city-men mostly is easy-tempered. Not partickerlerly well-to-do, an't he? Old family he belongs to, eh? What lots o' plate some o' them poor noblemen do have! Wonder myself that they don't sell it and get the good out on it, 'stead of hiding it away at the banker's? Don't keep it at the bankers! Pity the poor cuss as cleans it, then! Go to Brighton or Bath, of course, when the season's over; I thought as much; it takes poor folks to travel," etc., etc. And then, the first step after getting out of Newgate would be to make love to the maid-servant when the family was out of town. Very devoted he'd be, until some evening he'd think it "such a pity there were no oranges in the house, or something else to cool your mouth with; there was such a nice, respectable place round the corner; wouldn't she just step round there and choose something for herself?" And then, while the the poor girl was gone, the accomplices, well instructed as to the whereabouts of the plate, would ransack the safe at their leisure. You may depend upon it, sir, it was a good thing for society when the present discipline was adopted.

The little court-yard we are crossing now is one of those where the prisoners take their exercise. Oh! yes, sir; they all have regular times for exercise, and in these yards within the building there is no possibility of their making their escape. I am going to show one of our cells for solitary confinement. Let me turn up the gas in this small room. You see this door which I open, and again an inner door, which I open too. Step in, sir. Now, turn so that your eye may catch the gaslight outside. Here is a bedstead; you can feel it, if you don't see it. In this cell, pitch-dark and cut off from the rest of the prison so completely that no shouts or screams would be heard, unruly prisoners are confined for any period between one hour and three days, with only bread and water for food. There is ventilation and warmth here, as in the other cells. The doctor comes each morning to see that mind and body are sound. Only by sentence of a magistrate can the confinement be prolonged beyond three days. Yes, sir, it is an awful place; and then, too, the men look upon it as sheer lost time. We have soldiers in here sometimes, and they say that they can make up for three days on bread and water in the guard-house, by spending their whole pay in eating and drinking when they come out; but here it's just loss of rations, and nothing else. You'll hardly ever catch an old thief in here. "Oh! don't stop my grub, whatever you do," he'll say, and so he takes care to behave well enough to keep out of "solitary." The prisoners who mind it least are little ragamuffins, accustomed to creep into any dark hole, to curl themselves up and go to sleep. They are never afraid of anything. Decent boys, in prison on suspicion of forgery or whatever, are dreadfully scared. But you'll be glad to get out into the daylight again, I am thinking, sir.

I'll show you our chapel now. In that screened gallery the women sit, where they can see everything without being seen. There is divine service here every morning, as well as on Sundays. No, sir; I've no authority to show you the female side of the prison, which is quite distinct from ours, and has female warders, and a committee of lady visitors. The system of female keepers works perfectly well; but it would have been impracticable before we adopted separate cells, because the talk among the prisoners was such as no decent woman should hear. A wicked woman is a thousand times worse than a bad man, and less intelligent, too. You see, sir, a woman falls because she is either pretty, or silly, or unprotected. Now, bad men and boys are often the most intelligent of their class, and are selected as tools for that very reason, by older rogues than themselves. It is one of the terrible features of the case, that the country loses valuable servants in these quick-witted outlaws.

Here we come out upon the sloping passage, leading to the criminal courts—Birdcage-walk, the old thieves call it. Over-head we get the light through the open iron-work, you see. Under the flags are buried all those who have been hanged, and the initial letter of the name is scratched on the wall above the grave. That iron door at the end leads to the court-rooms. Yes, indeed, sir, some of the prisoners one learns to like best are those awaiting execution here, educated men sometimes. Oh! yes; I know the names that all these letters stand for. Muller lies there. No, he was not much of a man, any way. Here's Courvoisier, who murdered Lord Russell; he was my lord's valet. Those five letters stand for five pirates. This one was a coachman, who murdered a female in the city, and burned the remains in his stable. Here's a man who killed his wife. Why, yes, sir; there are a good many in here for wife-murder; aggravating, I suppose, at times. That was an Italian, who killed another female in the city. This man hung his own child in the cellar. Oh! no, he was not insane; jealous of his wife, or something of the sort, I believe. There are a good many more here, but their cases were not so well known. Another court-yard to be crossed, sir, and here we are in one of the condemned cells. A good deal larger it is than the common cells, you see, with a bedstead, a good-sized table, and a long bench. From the time of his condemnation, the poor fellow is never left alone, night or day; two officers take turn and turn about in staying with him. Oh! certainly, sir, they talk with him; not about his case, of course, but of any book they have been reading, or of things outside the prison, and so on. The idea is not to let his mind dwell much on what is before him, and so spare him all the suffering we can.

You are right, sir; it would be absolutely impossible to dispense with capital punishment in this country. Murder is common enough now, but I am confident it would be much more frequent if the fear of death were withdrawn. Your professional thief never commits murder. All rogues have an especial line of business. A house-breaker is never guilty of highway robbery; a highway-man never picks pockets; and they none of them commit murder. Now, sir, there is a deal of talk about the horrors of a public execution, and the bad effect such a sight must have on the people. Well, sir, I am of a different opinion. The people who come to a hanging are the very scum of London. Some gentlemen there are, too, I know, by the looks of the windows opposite; but the crowd is chiefly made up of the mere scum and dregs of London. I think, sir, it is a lesson to them, and a lesson they need badly. Sometimes we say to the little ragamuffins who get in here, "Did you ever go to a hanging?" "Yes, sir." "And what did you think of it?" "Why, I wasn't in a very good place, sir; I couldn't see much." "Well, don't you know that if you go on as you're going now, you may come to commit murder one of these days, and be hanged yourself?" "Oh! no, sir! I mustn't commit murder." He has learned that much, if he's not learned anything else. [Footnote 224]

[Footnote 224: We present this argument simply as a statement of one side of an oft-mooted question, but we are far from being convinced of its validity.]

I believe that if capital punishment were abolished, a thief, instead of leaving his pal (as the vulgar term is for accomplice) in a mask, to watch the man and wife while he searches for plate, would kill them both. He would know that he could only be transported for life, and if he killed the officers placed in charge over him, the law could only repeat the same sentence. Yes, sir; you are right; capital punishment is sometimes too severe a penalty, in proportion to the crime it punishes. It falls, now and then, on a man who has not led a bad life in general, but who is possessed by one passion—jealousy, or revenge, or whatever. There should be a clearer distinction of circumstances in pronouncing sentence. A man who sets out to do a thing, with a distinct determination to take life if he can in no other way accomplish his purpose, commits murder. A man devoured by passion, and acting under its influence, should be judged less severely. And yet, sir, since the penalty of death is less designed as a punishment of criminals than as a defence of the public, even this distinction is very hard to make. We can only hope that our children will judge the matter more wisely than we do.

This room, sir, inclosed in glass, is the apartment where a prisoner meets his solicitor. The door is closed upon client and counsel, and the officer in attendance cannot hear their talk, or learn what points are to be used in the defence.

Here we are in the room where the prisoner is prepared for execution. I'll get the key, and unlock the closet where our irons are kept. This is the old style, sir, very cumbrous, as you see. Here are the identical irons Jack Sheppard wore. They would be so much too large for me, that I could slip my foot out at once; but in those days they wore pads around the ankle, so that the ring fitted close. When you read of Jack's breaking loose from his irons, it sounds very grand; but all he did was to unwind the pad from his ankle, and draw his foot out. These are the irons we use in travelling with convicts; here are common handcuffs, as you see; and here is the sort of harness worn by prisoners about to be executed. It pinions the arms firmly, and, at the last moment, fastens the legs together. Why, no, sir; I can't say that educated men bear it any better than ignorant ones. I've seen educated men most awfully frightened. I think it was death they feared, sir, not shame. When they are ready, they pass through this passage, and out through the iron door I showed you in the kitchen, on to the square. Step into this cabinet a moment, sir. On those shelves are casts taken after death from those who have been executed. There is Muller, there is Courvoisier, there is Marchand. The young fellow with negro features was only nineteen. He murdered his fellow-servant. Yes, the one next him looks like a negro too; you are probably right, sir. The one with the well-formed, dimpled chin little thought how his pleasure-loving youth would end. Surprisingly life-like they all are. Yes, these are the men who lie under the flags in the Birdcage-walk. This way, sir, for your hat and cane. Good day, sir. Astonishingly fine weather for the season.

II. Saint Lazare.

The ancient convent of Saint Lazare, in Paris, once the home of St. Vincent de Paul, is now a prison for women taken from the lowest depths of Parisian life. Their name is legion; their sufferings from sickness and neglect before arrest are unutterable. France has no law for such as they beyond the will of the prefect of police. What alleviation, you ask, has been found for this corrosive social evil? A more effective one than disbelievers in French virtue would anticipate. All females who come under the notice of the police for sanitary reasons or criminal matters, are sent to Saint Lazare, where, instead of jailers, there are fifty-five Sisters of Charity. [Footnote 225]

[Footnote 225: Or, more strictly speaking, fifty-five Sisters of Marie Joseph, the sisterhood devoted to prison discipline in France.]

How many of the miserable creatures are converted by intercourse with these noble and refined women, God only knows. The day of judgment will reveal the difference between real and apparent success. But a woman who has been first the plaything and then the scorn of society, must think more tenderly of God in Saint Lazare, than in any ordinary prison or workhouse.

Two objections which may be made to the system of treatment adopted at Saint Lazare, I will try to answer before enumerating the very details which would probably suggest them.

In the first place, it may be urged that the prisoners are made so comfortable that imprisonment becomes a reward rather than a punishment, a bribe rather than a threat. Secondly, it may be with truth asserted that the wicked poor receive better care in such an establishment, than society gives to the virtuous poor who have never seen the inside of a jail.

To the first objection I answer, that imprisonment is never easy for such women to bear, because the passions which bring them so low, love of excitement and vanity, find no food in a well-ordered prison; that the opposite system has been tested ever since the world was, and still the world overflows with impenitent sinners; that at least half the prisoners of Saint Lazare are wicked for want of precisely what they find there—judicious training; a decent dwelling-place, good example; and, last and best reason of all, that this system is the one most in accordance with the teaching and example of Christ.

And my answer to the second objection is this. Let us seek out the honest poor, provide them with decent lodging-houses at low prices, with practical education, useful and entertaining reading, innocent amusement, and, above all, with religious and moral instruction; but do not let us relax our efforts to reform sinners merely because we have shamefully neglected our duties toward saints. We may say truly that the respectable poor are hard to find, because their very virtues conceal them from the public eye. We have no such excuse where sinners are concerned; for they are festering in every jail, penitentiary, and almshouse in every city throughout the world. Justice, not charity, demands that society should provide decent asylums where its victims may hide their wretchedness.

But let us examine the discipline of Saint Lazare in detail, that the reader may judge for himself whether these objections have been satisfactorily disposed of.

The inmates are divided into three classes: 1st. Women who have been tried for crimes and condemned; 2d. Filles publiques, consigned to St. Lazare by the police for sanitary or other reasons; 3d. Young girls and children sent thither by their parents (correction paternelle) for safe keeping, or brought there by the police as vagrants.

The uniform is neat and inconspicuous, dark blue for one class of offenders, and maroon for the other; I think the children wear no uniform. The clothes-rooms are arranged very methodically, under-clothing and dresses being laid on shelves in orderly piles which would satisfy the most fastidious Yankee housekeeper. The common prison garments are comfortable and well made; but there is a higher grade of clothing for those who can afford to pay for it, who are there on "pistole," as the technical term is, taken from an old French coin. The same is to be said of food and lodging; comfortable accommodations being provided for all, while small luxuries can be purchased at a small expense. Tariffs are posted all over the prison, that the inmates may know the fixed prices of various articles, and not be subjected to dishonesty on the part of sub-officials. The present writer, who endured the terrible ordeal imposed on all conscientious visitors, of tasting everything the various kitchens produced, can answer for the excellent quality of soup, coffee, bread, etc., etc. Having been allowed to content himself with visual proof in passing through the well-ordered pharmacies, he can only vouch for their neatness and apparent convenience.

The work-rooms are generally furnished with tiers of benches graduated nearly to the ceiling, so that one sister can superintend a roomful of work-women. The gentleman who accompanied me in my first visit showed me with some pride the comfortable straw seats. "The empress came here one day," he said, and asked the prisoners if they were in need of anything. They told her the wooden benches were uncomfortable, and her majesty ordered these seats to be made, where they can sit and sew all day without great fatigue. Yes, our empress is a good and charitable soul."

Many institutions send work to be done at Saint Lazare, and each prisoner receives a certain proportion of the proceeds of her labor, that she may have the wherewithal to begin an honest life when her term is out. Each day's earnings she writes down in her own little account-book, a dingy record of hopes, as it must be to some of them. The court-yards, where there is an hour's recreation twice a day, are large and cheerful. In the centre are large tanks where the women are allowed to wash small articles of clothing; an inestimable privilege, as any one knows who has seen prisoners trying to extemporize a laundry in their cells with a tin wash-basin. These courts are the favored haunts of sparrows who twitter as cheerfully within the old prison walls as under the eaves of good men's dwellings. A magpie was hopping about in the cloister with the air of an habitué, looking amazingly as if he were there on sentence.

There are a number of infirmaries, all tended by Sisters of Charity, and well supplied from a kitchen devoted to hospital diet. The patients are of the lowest class, their maladies the saddest that flesh is heir to. That such a hospital should have any attraction to the visitor is impossible; but remembering the hosts of such forlorn creatures who throng our jails and almshouses in America, I longed to transport wards and warders to the other side of the Atlantic and inaugurate a change in prison discipline for women. [Footnote 226]

[Footnote 226: In the February number of The Catholic World appeared an article entitled Paris Impious, and Religious Paris, giving some interesting details concerning Saint Lazare.]

I had the good fortune to be accompanied by a gentleman associated for many years with prison reforms, and charged with high authority in the matter of prison discipline in Paris. He makes it his rule to visit the prisoners at all times and seasons, that he may detect any breach of discipline or lack of fidelity on the part of the superintendents. He is a man who under the wretched disguise of vice recognizes humanity, no matter how defiled; who looks rather to remove the causes of sin than to procure its punishment, and sees in every culprit a good man spoiled. Let no one suppose that I mean to advocate a feeble administration of justice. No; in a prison, over-indulgence means chaos; present weakness means future severity. At Saint Lazare steady, unswerving vigilance is observed, and silence enforced among the prisoners. Discipline being maintained evenly, not spasmodically, the prisoners can be allowed privileges very important to them. Visitors are admitted twice a week to converse with the women through two gratings, as at Newgate, a sister standing in the narrow passage between. Recreation in the yards is taken in common, instead of separately. It is surprising to find how a prisoner clings to the privilege of seeing his fellow-creatures, even when there is no chance of communication. The peculiar pangs inflicted by the solitary system, when endured for a long time, can only be appreciated by those who have had confidential intercourse with prisoners.

The prisoners' chapel is very cheerful, and has a pretty sanctuary with stained-glass windows, and an altar beautifully cared for. One of the points most worthy of approval in Saint Lazare, is the attractive form under which religion is everywhere presented. In each dormitory, infirmary, and work room, is an oratory; or, at least, some image or picture suited to impress the souls of the prisoners.

One part of the establishment is full of tender associations to every Christian soul—the sisters' private chapel, whose sanctuary was once the cell of Saint Vincent de Paul. The stone floor in the recessed window where he used to pray is worn hollow with the pressure of his knees. Saint Lazare was frequented in those days by many pilgrims, and in his cell the saint sought refuge from distraction and dissipation of spirit. It is from kneeling-cushions such as his, that the prayers go up to heaven which work true reforms, which achieve immortal victories whose laurels are fresh centuries after the conqueror's soul glories in the presence of God. I have never stood in any cathedral with a soul more filled with veneration than in this little chapel of Saint Lazare, where Saint Vincent de Paul prayed; and where his children pray still, devoted to the work most repugnant to human nature, that of tending beings who remind us what we should all be but for the grace of God.

One infirmary is a lying-in hospital. The mothers can keep their young children at Saint Lazare, or send them away as they choose. In this infirmary shone forth the kindly spirit of my guide. "This always touches me," he said; "for I am a père de famille" and he went from baby to baby with gentle looks and womanly sweetness, a man stalwart of frame as a grenadier. And it touched me, too, though I am not père de famille, to see the lines of little cribs, and the poor, forlorn mothers tending their tiny waifs and strays.

There is one serious defect in the construction of Saint Lazare, making it in that respect unsuitable for a prison. There is but one large dormitory for the adult prisoners who are in good health. The others sleep, two, three, or even four in a large cell, and with no arrangements for surveillance beyond a small aperture in the door, covered with glass. I remarked upon the imprudence of this arrangement, and was told that the danger was fully appreciated and deeply regretted. The French government is too generous in its treatment of public institutions to leave this evil long unremedied, I am confident.

Another defect in the regulations surprised me. There is no daily Mass in the public chapel of Saint Lazare, the prisoners hearing Mass on Sunday only. I had no opportunity of asking the reason of this omission, and will therefore refrain from making farther comment upon it. The third department in Saint Lazare is the most interesting, being the portion devoted to young girls and homeless children. The sentence is for six months only, but can be renewed if found expedient. My guide called to him child after child, and talked with them as he might talk with his own children at home. One little thing cried bitterly. Her mother had turned her into the streets to shift for herself, and the police, finding her wandering about the city, had brought her to Saint Lazare. He held her little hand in his and patted it softly as he said all the comforting things he could think of; there was not much to be said, one must confess. I asked where she would be sent when the six months were out. "To some industrial establishment under the charge of Sisters of Charity," was the answer; "The empress sees to all such things."

The young people are kept entirely separate from the prisoners, in the new part of Saint Lazare. They have several hours' schooling, and have their working hours, in which they earn money for themselves and for the establishment, as the women do. Each child has an exquisitely neat cell to herself for the night, opening with a grating on to a corridor, so that the watching sister can exercise a strict surveillance.

Whenever I see the right thing done in the right way for public offenders, I think of the man who first turned my attention to the subject of prison discipline—Governor Andrew, as he will be to us all in Massachusetts, no matter who holds the state reins. Surely the sun has not often shone on any spirit more steadfast or more tender than his; surely, the days of chivalry produced no knightly courage more unblenching than his; surely, whatever blessings come to Massachusetts in her future career, her children will never forget how valiantly that brave man fought for judicious legislation, for a humane execution of the laws, and for the equal rights of Catholics and Protestants—will never forget John Albion Andrew!

Translated From Le Correspondant.
A Heroine Of Conjugal Love.
Marquise De La Fayette.

When, at the end of the year 1864, the children of Madame de Montagu, having overcome the natural scruples of filial modesty, consented to open to the public the treasure of noble examples and Christian virtues enclosed in the remembrances of their mother, Le Correspondant was the first among the public organs to announce the lively interest felt in the recital. The success more than justified our predictions. There is no one who would not be edified by the perusal of the life of Madame de Montagu, and the book has already taken its place in our libraries.

Since that publication, the Duchess of Ayen, around whom are grouped five daughters widely differing from each other, and each with a strongly marked individuality, has become in some sort the type of the Christian mother in modern society.

Indeed, maternal love was in truth the terrestrial passion of her heart, and would entirely have occupied it, had not the care of this dear flock borne with it higher duties, and rendered greater her accountability. The marvellous gift had been given her to form souls; to develop the budding good within them, and, while respecting the originality peculiar to each, to arm them with incomparable strength.

We need not return to what, four years ago, we have already published of the Christian discipline, the simple and retired life to which the Duchess of Ayen had accustomed her daughters, realizing in them her type of true womanhood, making the heart superior to destiny, neither dazzled by fortune or success, nor cast down by the ills of life. When the life of Madame de Montagu was first published, only in episode we recognized those of the noble daughters of the Duchess d'Ayen, reserved by Providence for the rudest trials, or destined for a bloody immolation. We speak of the Viscountess de Noailles, who with her mother and grandmother, the old Marchioness of Noailles, perished on the scaffold, and Madame de La Fayette, the voluntary prisoner of Olmutz, in truth one of the most touching heroines of conjugal love. In the life of their sister they are but secondary figures; but as it is permitted even among the saints of paradise to have a preference, we must confess that, in this beautiful group of heroic figures, our predilection has always been for the two eldest. It will be readily understood, then, with what respect and emotion we have opened the book, in which we would not only find the abridged recital of the actions of Madame de La Fayette, but could see her act, hear her speak herself of her dearly loved mother, listen to the passionate accents of her voice, and, indeed, almost feel the very beatings of her heart.

This volume, printed by Téchener with great typographical care, contains the life of the Duchess of Ayen, written by Madame de La Fayette, in the fortress of Olmutz, on the margin of a Buffon, with a little India-ink and a tooth-pick, and subject to the hateful inspection of the Austrian jailers. We could not find a more touching relic. Nowadays we mount distinguished autographs in gold; should this ever pass into public sale, would it not justify unheard-of extravagances? And we have now this life of Madame de La Fayette compiled by a daughter worthy of her, Madame de Lasteyrie, herself the representative of the virtue and charity of a race of which, according to an expression applied to an eminent royal family, all the daughters were chaste and the sons valiant. And to these two recitals we add another document, that we had the good fortune to publish in April, 1847, in which the good Abbé Carrichon, an ecclesiastic full of zeal, but timid in character, and who only by the grace of the holy ministry could rise to intrepidity, relates, in the most perfect good faith, the anguish he endured, when to his lot it fell to give to the three condemned ones the peace and consolation of last pardon. Those who may be astonished to find in a whole generation of the same family so many and such extraordinary virtues, may rest assured of its truth. Imagination has added nothing to the edifying recital of these beautiful lives. The original documents that we give to-day in their sublime nakedness, bear an accent of austere heroism and holy enthusiasm that strengthens the heart and penetrates it with the love of good; they vouch for our first publication. In the rapid analysis we will try to make from these documents, we will present the most striking traits of the character and life of Madame de La Fayette. Adrienne de Noailles, second daughter of the Duchess of Ayen, was of ardent temperament, of deep sensibility, with a lively imagination and a mind well informed. She ever refused to adopt any idea imposed upon her, that could not be subject to a free discussion. She seized difficulties and penetrated to their depths. While still a child, she was troubled by doubts of her religion, even when, at the age of twelve, she was prepared for her first communion. She does not give us the nature of these doubts, but it is clearly seen they never interfered with the practice of piety; on the contrary, her thirst for truth increased her fervor. Her pious mother was not alarmed at this state of her soul; she divined the source, and waited with confidence for grace to dissipate the clouds. Only, she believed it best to defer the first communion of her daughter until, calm and reassured, she could enjoy her supreme happiness in all its plenitude. And she did not presume too much on the integrity of her daughter; never was more solid piety or firmer faith implanted in a heart of deeper conviction.

If we were to study anew the perfect model of a mother which the Duchess of Ayen presents in the portrait drawn of her by Madame de La Fayette, a portrait depicted, too, with a sincerity that does not fear to let us penetrate the shadows, and so prove its reality, we should dwell upon the profoundly Christian spirit that directed her in the choice of her sons-in-law. We there see her rising above all worldly considerations, seeking above all things in them the moral qualities which may assure the happiness of her daughters; for she did not look upon marriage, as is too often done, as a simple affair of interest, of fortune, or of vanity, but it was, in her eyes, the sacred tie in which love should bear the greater part. God, who united man and woman, and who said, "Man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh," has he not made love the duty of Christian marriage? Under the old régime and among the nobility, marriages were contracted early, and Mesdemoiselles de Noailles were scarcely twelve or thirteen years old when the first proposition for their hands were made for them to their mother. One of these candidates, the Marquis de La Fayette, was himself only fourteen years old. "His extreme youth, his isolated position, having lost all his near relations, an immense fortune suddenly acquired, which the Duchesse d'Ayen looked upon only as a temptation," all these considerations, which in a purely worldly view would have seduced many a mother, decided her at first to refuse him, notwithstanding the good opinion she entertained of his character. The Duke d'Ayen strongly insisted on an alliance which combined every advantage of rank and wealth, but the duchess for several months none the less persisted in her refusal; and it was only after a more attentive examination of the character of M. de Lafayette had reassured her of the future of her daughter, that, demanding a delay of two years, she finally gave her consent. The idea of the moment when she must resign her daughters into the keeping of another, filled her with apprehension; evidently, she desired for them a felicity that she had not enjoyed herself, that of entire conformity of tastes, thoughts, and character in the companions of their lives; and when the marriages were resolved upon, it is delightful to read in the recital of Madame de La Fayette the detail of touching cares with which this tender mother charged herself, to prepare these eldest daughters for their new stations—one to espouse the Viscount de Noailles, a cousin whom she had loved since her infancy, and the other to be united to M. de La Fayette.

"'My heart attracted me to M. de La Fayette,' says with much simplicity the manuscript of the prisoner of Olmutz, 'and with a sentiment so profound, that our union has always been one of firmness and tenderness through all the vicissitudes of this life—through all the good and evil that have been our lot for twenty-four years.

"With what pleasure I discovered that, for more than a year, my mother had looked upon and loved him as her son! She detailed to me all the good she had known of him—what she thought of him herself, and I soon saw he possessed for her the filial charm that made the happiness of my life. She occupied herself in aiding my poor head, especially about this time so empty and so weak, to keep from going astray during such an important event. She taught me to ask, and she asked for me, the blessings of heaven on the state I was about to embrace.

"'I was then only fourteen and a half years old, and, having new duties to perform, my mother believed it her duty to reapply herself to the care of forming my sister and myself for our future destinies. The confidence with which we always conversed with her, gave her abundant opportunity. It was not the kind of confidence to which, I believe, mothers oftener pretend than obtain from their children—that inspired by a companion of one's own age—but the perfect and intimate trust which needs the direction and approval of a parent, and causes a pang of fear in any step, visit, or conversation, of which she may not approve. A confidence, in fine, which always returns to its support—to its guide, in whose light it would repose as well as in its tenderness; a guide who, if even one could not always approve its decisions, and might encounter its reproaches, would still be considered necessary, and to whom the idea of dissimulation would be insupportable.

"'Such was my feeling toward my mother, who often permitted me to argue with her.'"

The ceremony of the marriage accomplished, the husband of sixteen years set out for his regiment, and the young bride testified by her grief at this separation all the affection she experienced for him. He returned: the religious education of Madame de La Fayette was completed, she made her first communion with an entire faith and in the most humble dispositions, and soon after, on the 15th of December, 1775, she became a mother for the first time.

The faculty of loving knew no bounds in this youthful heart. Identified in all the tastes, aspirations, sentiments, and interests of him who had given her the right to say, in all sincerity, "I love you religiously, worldly, passionately," she adopted the political faith of her husband, and, without any personal afterthought, without weakness or hesitation, from her most tender age, valiantly accepted all the sacrifices and all the perils of the public life of a man whose political preoccupations governed him exclusively. He held the best part of her heart; but, immovable in her religious faith, Madame de La Fayette never sacrificed a principle nor a practice of piety to her conjugal idolatry. It is remarkable, also, that this ardor of passion for her husband never weakened the vivacity of her tenderness for her mother, her children, and her oldest sister, who, from the cradle, had been her dearest friend.

Inasmuch as she was sufficient for every duty, so her soul was sufficient in all its affections. The war which broke out about this time between England and her American colonies, opened to the Marquis de La Fayette the brilliant arena that would give immortality to his name; but for his young companion began an existence full, at the same time, of anguish and delirious joy, of grief and devotion. The family of Noailles had strongly adopted philosophical ideas, and willingly followed the liberal views of the eighteenth century. The generous enthusiasm, however, which led M. de La Fayette to devote himself to the service of the American people vindicating their independence, was at first severely disapproved of and considered madness by the Duke d'Ayen and the Marshal de Noailles. The marquis was nineteen; he had been married three years, was already a father, and soon expected a second child. Madame de La Fayette and the Duchess d'Ayen alone understood the motives that determined the departure of M. de La Fayette; the former studied in every way to conceal the torture of her heart, preferring to be considered insensible, or too much of a child, to giving the appearance, by showing her grief, of wrong to the object of her worship.

Meanwhile, the great struggle, of which the new world was the theatre, and in which aristocratic England found herself at war with the principal democracy of modern society, held all Europe in suspense. The greatest interest was felt in France for the success of the Americans. While the French government, though understanding how matters stood, hesitated, nevertheless, to take an open part in the quarrel, public opinion declared itself still more favorably for the United States; the various incidents of the war were greedily sought after, each success of the insurgents excited enthusiasm, and soon all hearts beat in unison with that of Madame de La Fayette, for the success of the young hero who had so actively contributed to such glorious results.

We must transport ourselves to this time, recall its events, watch the fever of public opinion, to understand what must have been, after two years' absence, the first return of M. de La Fayette, and the intoxication of joy his wife experienced. He was not long in setting out again for the new world, and did not return from there finally until 1782, after the brilliant campaign of which his valor assured the success, and which terminated by the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. His return was unexpected, a surprise for the court as well as the city: the memoirs and memories of the Count de Segur furnished curious testimony to support what we have said. We read:

"All who lived in that day will still remember the enthusiasm occasioned by the return of M. de La Fayette, an enthusiasm of which the queen herself partook. They were celebrating, at the Hotel de Ville, a brilliant fête on the occasion of the birth of an heir to the throne. The news came of the arrival of the conqueror of Cornwallis. Madame de La Fayette, who assisted at the fête, received a special mark of favor; the queen placed her in her own carriage, and drove to the Hotel de Noailles, where the marquis, her husband, had just alighted." [Footnote 227]

[Footnote 227: Tome i. p. 180.]

The excess of sentiment of Madame de La Fayette for her husband at this time, was such that she suffered intensely in his presence. She endeavored to conceal her passion for him, and trembled lest she might seem importunate, and weary him. Some years after, she confessed to M. de La Fayette this passionate attraction for him which she had so resisted; "but," she added gently, "you need not be dissatisfied with what is left."

We, who have only known M. de La Fayette soured and old, and do not feel well disposed toward him, because, under the restoration, he shadowed his glory as liberator of two worlds by intrigues with secret societies; we find it difficult to imagine him so charming, "carrying away every heart." But it was even so; and, at the same time that popular favor rendered him so powerful among the multitude, the most beautiful, the proudest, the most brilliant ladies of the court, were madly in love with him.

But we are not writing a biography of M. de La Fayette, and it will be understood that, in an article on the saintly companion of his life, we would not wish any controversy on so illustrious a person, and for whom, with some reservation, we profess great and sincere respect. We will not speak, then, of the events of the revolution, in which he played so prominent a part, only inasmuch as our heroine was mingled with and took part in them.

The abolition of the slave-trade was one of the philanthropic preoccupations of M. de La Fayette. He bought a plantation at Cayenne, la belle Gabrielle, in order to give an example of a gradual enfranchisement of the slaves, and referred to the active charity of his wife the details of his enterprise. With this view, she kept up a correspondence with the priests of the seminary du Saint-Esprit, who had a house at Cayenne. If circumstances did not permit the realization of her hopes, at least she had the consolation of knowing that, thanks to the religious instruction given to the blacks on this plantation, they were guilty of less horrors than at any other point in the colonies.

We must recognize here, too, and to its eternal honor, that America has always been the portion of the globe where liberty of conscience, loudly proclaimed, has never ceased to be practised. It was not so in old Europe and in France before 1789, so the contrast presented by this free state of things, and the numerous vexations to which the different religions were exposed with us, could not but forcibly strike M. de La Fayette on his return. After a journey to Nimes, where he studied more closely the situation of the Protestants, he was able to present, with full knowledge of the case, a proposition to the Assembly of the Notables in 1787, demanding their restoration to the civil rights of which they had been despoiled.

I love to remember that an eminent Catholic clergyman, Mgr. Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, and later, Cardinal, warmly supported the proposition for this act of justice. Madame de La Fayette shared these sentiments, and received with lively interest the Protestant ministers whom the result of the affair attracted around her husband. A zealous child of the Catholic Church, she detested the persecutions that could only alienate her children, and which appeared to her so opposed to the spirit of Christianity.

After 1783, M. de La Fayette, whose family had increased considerably, and whose political importance had reached its height, left the hotel de Noailles, to establish himself in his own house, rue de Bourbon, now the rue de Lille. And there the ever-increasing wave of the revolutionary movement, that was never able to overcome the virtue and brightness of a king, the most estimable as a man of any who ever wore a crown, found our heroine. The high position of M. de La Fayette, deputy of the nobility, member of the Constitutional Assembly, and commander-in-chief of the Parisian National Guard, imposed obligations on him in which his wife never repudiated her part. She was seen to accept the successive demands of each of the districts of Paris, to the number of sixty; to preside at the blessing of flags and other patriotic demonstrations. The general kept open house, and did its honors in a manner to charm his numerous guests.

"'But, says her daughter, Madame de Lasteyrie, initiated into her most secret thoughts, 'what she suffered in the depths of her own heart, only those who heard her speak, can tell. She saw my father at the head of a revolution of which it was impossible to foretell the end. Every evil, every disorder, was judged by her with a complete lack of illusion in her own cause; yet she was so sustained by the principles of her husband, and so convinced of the good he could do, and the evil he might avert, that she bore with incredible strength the continual dangers to which she was exposed. Never, said she to us, did I see him go out during this time, without thinking that I heard his last adieu. No one was more terrified than she by the dangers of those she loved; but in these times, she rose above herself, and in her devotion to my father, hoped he could prevent the increasing crime.'"

We may infer from these words the perpetual anguish of Madame de La Fayette during the three first years of the revolution. In the Duchesse d'Ayen she found a support full of sweetness and tenderness; who, though sharing none of the opinions of her son-in-law, believed firmly in the rectitude of his intentions. Her angelic sister, the Viscountess de Noailles, felt exactly as she did, loved equally a husband, young, handsome, brave, and charming, associated in the most advanced ideas of M. de La Fayette, and, like him, a member of the Assembly. The eldest daughter, too, of Madame de La Fayette, began at this time to be of much comfort to her; she had her make her first communion in 1790. It was, in the midst of the great political events of that epoch, the first concern of her maternal heart.

The civil constitution of the clergy was to be one of the most sensible tribulations of Madame de La Fayette. She considered she should, more particularly on account of her personal situation, declare her attachment for the Catholic Church; consequently she was present at the refusal of the oath which the curé of Saint Sulpice made from the pulpit, of whom she was a parishioner; she was constantly meeting there with persons most known by their opposition to the new principles, and with those then called the aristocratie. She took part assiduously in the offices, at first in the churches and afterward in the oratories where the persecuted clergy took refuge.

She continually received the nuns who fled to her for protection; or priests not under oath, whom she encouraged in the exercise of their functions, and the preservation of their religious liberty. She well knew that such conduct was hurtful to the popularity of her husband, of great importance to her to preserve, but no consideration could stop her in what she considered a duty.

M. de La Fayette never interfered with the conduct of his wife; he held as nobly to his principles of liberty of conscience in this respect as in all others. Aloud he disapproved of the oath extorted from the Catholic priests, opposed it wherever he could, and was at least successful in preventing the articles relative to this civil constitution of the clergy from being constitutional; on the contrary, they were even rejected from the class of ordinary laws that any new legislature might revise. For General La Fayette deluded himself that the constitution of 1791 was destined to last. But whatever his sentiments, that which made him respect the religious convictions of his wife, and oppose all his power to the persecution of the clergy, does great honor to his character. As the priests under oath were habitually received by the commander of the National Guard at Paris, Madame de La Fayette never dissimulated before them her attachment to the ancient bishops; but she mingled in her expressions so much adroitness with her sincerity that she never wounded them. Only once she deviated from the rule of tolerance that she imposed on herself on her husband's account, and that was when the newly elected constitutional Bishop of Paris, came to dine officially with the general. She would not recognize by her presence the quality of his diocese, and dined out, although she knew by doing so it could not fail to be made a subject of remark.

Meanwhile, the ever-increasing revolutionary delirium multiplied disorders, paralyzed the efforts of the constitutional party, and rendered the part of M. de La Fayette more and more difficult. He was suspected on both sides, by the court and by the Jacobins, and was rapidly wearing out the remains of an expiring popularity in an already useless struggle.

The king, to escape the odious tyranny of which he was the victim, attempted to fly from Paris; we know the rest. Arrested at Varennes, brought back to the Tuileries, he and his family were placed in the closest confinement. The unhappy prince at last resigned himself to accept the constitution, the Constituent Assembly terminated its sittings, and was replaced by the Legislative Assembly, and General La Fayette, sincere in the illusion that the revolution was finished and the future secured, gave in his resignation as commander of the National Guard, and set out for Auvergne with his wife and children. Now in the destiny of Madame de La Fayette there came a short truce of happiness; the journey from Paris to Chavaniac was a series of ovations that popular enthusiasm spread, for the last time, before her idol. The Duchess d' Ayen and the Viscountess de Noailles came a little while to share this apparent and transitory calm; but the Duke d'Ayen had emigrated to Switzerland, and Madame de Montagu had taken refuge in England. The formation of three grand army corps had been decreed, in imminent danger of a foreign war; the command of the centre was confided to General La Fayette, who repaired to his camp in 1791.

The year 1792 saw the hideous journey of the 20th of June, soon after followed by the scenes more lamentable still, of the 10th of August.

At the news of the wicked attempt of the 20th of June, the General de La Fayette did not fear to address to the assembly, from Maubeuge, where were then his head-quarters, a letter in which he declaimed with indignation and vehemence against the Jacobins; and finally, quitting his camp, he hastened to Paris and appeared at the bar of the Assembly; there to brand energetically the violences committed at the Tuileries, and demand the punishment of the guilty. Was not this act of courage alone sufficient honor for a lifetime? But finally, seeing he had nothing to hope from the Assembly, he attempted to organize a resistance at Sedan in order to save Louis XVI. The triumphant Jacobins replied, on the 10th of August, by a decree of proscription to the refusal which M. de La Fayette made to recognize the fall of the king; a price was put upon his head, and, constrained in his turn to seek a refuge in a foreign land, the patriot of 1789 fell on the frontier into an Austrian post, was arrested with his aides-de-camp, conducted first to Namur, then to Wesel, and considered by the allied powers as an enemy of universal peace, whose liberty was incompatible with the surety of European governments.

The arbitrary detention of MM. de La Fayette, Latour Maubourg, and Bureaux de Pusy, remains one of the disgraces of the government of the Emperor Francis II., and he cannot be blamed enough for it; but in the condition of parties and in view of the renown of M. de La Fayette, had it not for him some great advantages? In our eyes, the five years of carcere duro inflicted upon the hero of American liberty, completed his glory. Such were the sentiments of Madame de Staël when she wrote to congratulate him on his release: "Your misfortune has preserved your glory, and if your health can be restored, you will come out perfect from the tomb where your name has acquired a new lustre." But dating from this epoch, what was not the ineffable anguish of Madame de La Fayette? Informed of the arrest of her husband, she had but one thought—to release him or share his captivity. But she had two other duties to fulfil; to get her son out of France, and, if possible, to confide him to the friendship of General Washington, and to protect the interests of the creditors of General La Fayette by giving them the sequestrated estates for security, and in both she experienced great difficulty. Arrested at Chavaniac, where she was resting with her son, aged thirteen, her two daughters, and the aged aunt who had brought up M. de La Fayette, she obtained from Roland, then minister of the interior, permission not to be taken to Paris, but to remain at Chavaniac on parole. Encouraged by this testimony of humanity, and hoping to be delivered from an engagement that weighed so heavily on her, she smothered her natural pride and again addressed herself to Roland:

"'I can only attribute to a sentiment of kindness,' she wrote him, 'the change you have brought about in my situation. You spare me the dangers of too perilous a journey, and consent to give me my retreat for my prison. But any prison, be it what it may, is insupportable to me, since I have learned this morning from the gazette of M. Brissot, that my husband has been transferred from town to town by the enemies of France, and is being conducted to Spandau. Whatever repugnance I may feel to owe a service to those who have shown themselves the enemies and accusers of him whom I revere and love as he only is worthy of being loved, yet it is in all the sincerity of my heart that I vow eternal gratitude to him who, while relieving the administration from responsibility and giving me my freedom, will afford me the opportunity to rejoin my husband, if France is sufficiently free to allow me to travel without risk.

"On my knees, if necessary, I ask you this favor. Judge of my present state of mind. Noailles La Fayette."

A faithful friend bore this letter to Roland. He appeared deeply moved, and replied immediately:

"I have placed your touching appeal, my dear madam, before the committee. I must observe, however, that it would not appear to me prudent for a person of your name to travel in France, on account of the unfortunate impressions just now attached to it. But circumstances may change. Be assured if they do, I shall be the first to seize upon them for your advantage."

For three months the poor woman was without any news of the general, though she redoubled every effort to obtain it; she wrote to the Princess of Orange, to the Duke of Brunswick, to Klopstock, but all in vain. Toward the middle of June, there came to her, through the interposition of the United States minister, two letters from M. de La Fayette; they were dated from the dungeon of Magdebourg, and the inquietude they gave her concerning the health of her husband made her more than ever anxious to join him. Governeur Morris, then American minister, proved her constant and faithful friend, and from him she accepted the loan of money of which she had need, to pay some debts and for the daily expenses of her family. At this time many of the wives of emigrants believed it necessary for their personal security, and preservation of their fortunes, to be divorced; Madame de La Fayette would never consent to save her life by such an act, and whenever she found it necessary to present a petition or make a demand, she took a pride in commencing all she wrote, "The wife of La Layette." In the midst of all these terrible agitations, the fervor of our heroine never decreased. She submitted with sweet resignation to the divine will, and associated in her exercises of piety the women of the village, who, like herself, were deprived of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which was no longer celebrated. These innocent meetings were the subject of many denunciations; of aristocracy they could not accuse her, but now it was fanaticism. At the end of the year 1795, after the complete defeat of the Girondins, the persecutions against the priests and the ci-devant nobles were redoubled, and some of the effects of the general were exposed to sale. This courageous wife repaired to Brionde, where the auction took place. "Citizens," said she, to the district, "I feel myself obliged to protest before the sale about to take place, against the enormous injustice of applying the laws of emigration to him who now is the prisoner of the enemies of France. I demand of you certificate of my protestation."

The 12th of November, Madame de La Fayette was informed she would be arrested the next day; and truly she was carried off in the evening by a detachment of the National Guard, and incarcerated at Brionde. Her children remained at Chavaniac, but at the end of a few months the jailer was won over, and M. Frestel, preceptor of the young Georges, conducted them, one after the other, to their mother. ... It was in this prison of Brionde that the news reached her that Mesdames de Noailles and Madame d'Ayen, both arrested, had just been transferred to the Luxembourg; then in May, 1794, came the order to bring the Citoyenne La Fayette to Paris. She entered there the 19th Prairial, eve of the fête of the Supreme Being, three days before the one when, according to Madame de Lasteyrie, "they built up terror upon terror." Placed at la petite Force, at the end of fifteen days she was transported to Plessis, where she found her cousin, the Duchess of Duras. The massacres of the revolutionary tribunal at this time were no less than sixty a day; everything seemed to announce to the prisoner that she was being led to certain death.

One of the buildings of Plessis served as a depot to the Conciergerie, and each morning saw twenty prisoners depart for the guillotine. "The idea that one may soon be of the number," wrote Madame de La Fayette, "gives firmness for such a spectacle." She made a will at Plessis, of which several passages are given; nothing could be more noble and beautiful. It begins in this way:

"Lord, thou hast been my strength and my hope in the extreme evils that are poured down upon me; thou art my God."

Fifty days were thus passed by the prisoner, when on the 10th Thermidor, a great tumult being heard in the street, it was supposed the populace were rushing to massacre all in prison; it was the announcement of the death of Robespierre.

The representatives, Bourdon de l'Oise and Legendre came soon after to visit the prison and assign the fate of each. All were set at liberty except Madame de La Fayette, on whom they were not willing to pronounce sentence until they sent for the decision of the committee. The unhappy woman was but little concerned at the prolongation of her captivity; for she had just learned that her mother, her grandmother, and her sister had perished on the 4th Thermidor. Her grief was overwhelming, but she never revolted, her prayers preserved her. "Now," she wrote to her children, "I find the sentiments of those I mourn, those, too, that I desire, and those that I pray God to put in my heart, and sometimes I obtain all at once." Notwithstanding the active solicitations of Mr. Monroe, the new minister from the United States, Madame de La Fayette was not liberated; Le Piessis was used for other purposes, so she was transferred to the Maison Delmas, rue Notre Dame des Champs; she remained there four months, and met there with the strangest people, for it was now the partisans of the reign of terror who peopled the prisons; but there, as everywhere, she gained the respect of all. Her physical sufferings were great during the rigorous winter of 1794 and 1795. Everything froze in her room, and she was peculiarly sensitive to cold. God granted her in her distress a precious consolation in the visits of the Abbé Carrichon. He gave her all the details she hungered after of the death of the three dear persons that he had accompanied to the scaffold, and with him she made a complete examination of all the faults of her life. On the 23d of January, 1795, the deliverance, so long retarded, of Madame de La Fayette was finally signed, and she was set at liberty.

Her first care on leaving prison was to hasten to Mr. Monroe and thank him for all he had done for her, and begged him to finish the good work by obtaining passports for herself and family. She had but one aim, to rejoin her husband in Germany with her daughters, and place her son in safety in America. The letter she wrote General Washington, in which she portrays with simplicity, firmness, and dignity the obligations she was under to M. Frestel for his devotion to her and her family, and begs for him the regard he deserves, is truly remarkable. As to her son, she expresses herself thus: "My wish is, that my son may lead a very retired life in America, and continue the studies that three years of misfortune have interrupted; and that being far away from scenes which might abase or too strongly irritate him, he may work to become an efficient citizen of the United States, of which the principles and sentiments are entirely in accordance with those of French citizens."

When the time came to part with her only son, the separation seemed cruel to her mother's heart; but she was firmly convinced she acted in this matter as her husband would have dictated. She found her strength in this thought. As we read of so many sacrifices, sufferings, and sorrows so valiantly supported, we find ourselves so associated in the sentiments of this incomparable person, that we wait with feverish anxiety the moment when she should rejoin her husband. The memoirs of Madame de Montagu give us the details of the touching reunion of Madame de La Fayette at Altona with her two sisters and her Aunt de Tessé; they will be found in the account of Madame de Lasteyrie. The conversation with the Emperor of Austria is also there given. He granted her permission to shut herself up at Olmutz, and by opening heaven to her, he could scarcely have made her happier.

"'We arrived,' wrote Madame de Lasteyrie, 'at Olmutz, the 1st of October, 1795, at eleven o'clock in the morning, in one of the covered carriages found at all the posts, our own having been broken on the way. I never shall forget the moment when the postillion showed us from afar the steeples of the town. The vivid emotion of my mother is ever present with me. She was almost suffocated by her tears; and when she had sufficiently recovered herself to speak, she blessed God in the words of the canticle of Tobias: "Thou art great, O Lord, for ever, and thy kingdom is unto all ages, for thou scourgest and thou savest," etc., etc. My father was not informed of our arrival; he had never received a letter from my mother. Three years of captivity, the last passed in complete solitude, inquietude concerning all the objects of his affection, and sufferings of every kind, had deeply undermined his health; the change in his countenance was frightful. My mother was struck by it; but nothing could diminish the intoxication of her joy, but the bitterness of her irreparable losses. My father, after the first moment of happiness in this sudden reunion, dared not ask her a question. He knew there had been a reign of terror in France, but he was ignorant of the victims. The day passed without his venturing to examine into her fears, and without my mother having the strength to explain herself. Only at night, when my sister and I were shut into the next room assigned to us, could she inform my father that she had lost on the scaffold her grandmother, her mother, and her sister.'"

Madame de La Fayette shared her husband's captivity twenty-seven months. She paid with her health—we may say with her life—the privilege of being reunited to him she loved, and proving to him her tenderness; but it was such great happiness to her that, whatever the severity that accompanied it, it seems not even at such a price to have been too dearly bought.

At last the success of the French arms opened the dungeon of Olmutz. The French plenipotentiaries, in signing the treaty of Campo Formio, exacted that the prisoners should be immediately set at liberty. The gates of the fortress were therefore opened to them, and the 16th of September, 1797, they set out for Hamburg. It was just five years and a half since their arrest.

Happy to owe his liberty solely to the triumph of the French army, M. de La Fayette addressed to General Bonaparte the expression of his gratitude and that of his companions in arms, in these terms:

"Hamburg, Oct. 6, 1797.
"Citizen General: The prisoners of Olmutz, happy to owe their deliverance to your irresistible arms, have enjoyed in their captivity the thought that their liberty and life were attached to the triumphs of the republic and to your personal glory. To-day they enjoy the homage they would love to render to their liberator. It would, indeed, have been gratifying to us, Citizen General, to have offered in person the expression of these sentiments, and to have looked upon the theatre of so many victories, the army that won them, and the hero, who has placed our resurrection among the number of his miracles. But you know the journey to Hamburg has not been left to our choice. It is from the place where we have said good by to our jailers that we address our thanks to their conquerors. In the solitary retreat in the Danish territory of Holstein, where we will go to try and re-establish the health you have saved, we will join to our vows or patriotism for the republic the most lively interest in the illustrious general, to whom we are not only attached for the services he has rendered our country and in the cause of liberty, but for the particular obligations that we delight to owe him, and that the deepest gratitude has for ever engraven in our hearts. Salutation and respect.

"Lafayette,
Latour Maubourg,
Bureaux de Pusy."

Among all the marks of sympathy showered upon the escaped victims of Austrian tyranny, none touched M. de La Fayette more deeply than one from Madame de Staël—full of respect and emotion. Mathieu de Montmorency added to it a few lines in which these words strike us: "The constant occupation of your misfortunes and your courage has outlived in me, and ever will, my alienation from all political activity; but I believe I should renew all my ancient enthusiasm to welcome one so constant in the cause of liberty."

Although the health of Madame de La Fayette was destroyed, she preserved her wonderful activity and force of character. It was she, the only one of her family, whose name was not on the list of the banished, who was able the first to enter France, and there regulate her affairs and the return of all her relations. It was she again who, after the 18th Brumaire, understood that General La Fayette should return immediately without waiting for any authority that might possibly have been refused him. Sure of the marvellous tact with which she judged her surroundings, he followed her advice without any other information. The news of his arrival in Paris was not pleasing to the first consul; he wanted the general to return to Holland and solicit his entrance, like every one else. Madame de La Fayette called upon him, was graciously received, exposed the peculiar position of her husband, and the favorable effect that his return could not fail to produce on all honest and patriotic men, and proved herself noble, skilful, and prudent. "I am delighted, madame," said the first consul to her, "to have made your acquaintance; you have great good sense, but you understand nothing of business." However, it was agreed to that M. de La Fayette might remain openly in Paris without asking permission. Madame de Lasteyrie, in her recital, in which the most noble sentiments are expressed so simply and happily, has given us a page that portrays the whole soul of her heroic mother.

"Retirement would still have been preferable to my father under the consular magistracy of Bonaparte; under the despotism of Napoleon, it was, through honor, enforced upon him. In either case, it fulfilled the wishes of my mother. After so much suffering and exhaustion, a retired life—perfect quietude would not have been necessary for her—in which in peace she could consecrate the affections of her soul to those dearest to her, was the only earthly happiness she sought. She felt too deeply, too passionately, I may say, the emotions of family life to desire others. Neither the grandeur of her former state, nor the éclat even of her misfortunes, had excited in her that pride of imagination which cannot bear a simple existence. Her devotion rose above every trial, but the sentiments and easy duties of an obscure destiny sufficed for her heart. Love filled it entirely."

What can we add to this picture? Nothing, only to ask the perusal of the admirable letter of M. de La Fayette, which ends the volume. He there relates the long agony, the tender and charming delirium of the heavenly creature whose affections he possessed. To have seen him a practical Christian would have been the realization of her most cherished wish. "If I am going to another home, you must feel," she said to him once, "that I shall be occupied there with you. The sacrifice of my life would be very little, however much it may cost me to part with you, if it could assure your eternal happiness."

Another time, she said to him: "You are not a Christian?" As he did not reply, she said: "Ah! I know what you are, a fatalist." "You believe me proud," answered the general, "are you not a little so yourself?" "Oh! yes!" she cried, "with all my heart. I feel that I would give my life for that sect." Another time, in this half delirium which led astray her ideas, but never her heart, she said: "This life is short, troubled; let us be reunited in God, and set out together for eternity." Her God and her husband were her thoughts to the last moment. She died on Christmas night, the 25th of December, 1807, pressing the cherished hand and saying, "I am yours for ever."

Those who wish to finish this picture of conjugal love, must do as we have done, seek in the memoirs of an illustrious contemporary the scene that completes it. In the Memoires de M. Guizot, in the year 1834, we read:

"Some months before M. de Talleyrand had retired from public affairs, another celebrated man, very different in character, and celebrated in other ways, had disappeared from all worldly scenes. No life had been more exclusively, more passionately political than that of M. de La Fayette; no man had more constantly placed his political sentiments and ideas above all other preoccupations and all other interests, and yet in his death he was completely estranged from them. Having been ill for three weeks, he approached his last hour; his children and family alone surrounded his bed. He spoke no more, and they supposed he could not see. His son George noticed that, with an uncertain hand, he sought something on his breast; he came to the assistance of his father and laid in his hand the medallion that M. de La Fayette always wore suspended from his neck. He pressed it to his lips, and expired."

This medallion contained the likeness and hair of Madame de La Fayette, his wife whom he had lost twenty-seven years before. Thus, already separated from the entire world, alone with the thought and image of the devoted companion of his life, he died. When his obsequies were spoken of, it was a recognized fact in the family, that M. de La Fayette wished to be buried in the little cemetery adjoining the convent of Picpus, by the side of Madame de La Fayette, in the midst of the victims of the revolution, for the most part, royalists, and of the aristocracy, whose relations had founded this pious establishment. This wish of the veteran of 1789 was scrupulously respected and carried out. An immense crowd, troops, national guards, people of all kinds accompanied the funeral procession through the avenues and streets of Paris. Arrived at the gate of the convent, the crowd was stopped; the interior enclosure could not admit more than two or three hundred persons; the family, the near relations, the principal authorities entered alone, walked silently through the convent into the modest garden, then penetrated the cemetery. There no political manifestation took place; no discourse was pronounced; religion and the intimate memories of the soul alone were present; politics had no place near the death-bed or the tomb of the man whose life it had filled and governed.

Léon Arbaud.

Translated From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.
Flaminia.
By Alexandre De Bar.

"So you really believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the Baron Frederic.

"Certainly I do," answered the Count Shrann.

"That is very strange," replied the first speaker, emptying at a single draught a tankard of beer whose size a German could alone look at without trembling.

"And you believe that those whom we have loved in this world we shall again love in the next, and they will remember us even as we shall remember them?"

"Certainly I do!" again replied the count.

"This is yet more strange," observed the baron; and then both of them continued to smoke on in silence. They seemed, indeed, so completely absorbed in the contemplation of the bluish clouds of smoke which they continued to puff forth so regularly into the already misty and thickened atmosphere, that one might reasonably have thought that the discussion would end there; but such was not the case.

Let us profit by this interval to make known to our readers who were the Count Shrann and the Baron Frederic. They were two old fellow-soldiers, of whom the recollection yet remains in the minds of those who knew them, as being the most perfect type of that warm and devoted friendship which is less rare than one thinks or than one will admit. They were two brave Germans, who had courageously held their places during the wars in the commencement of this century. They had fought side by side with all the ardor of their youth and patriotism, and had on many occasions saved each other's lives by their bravery. This community of dangers and obligations had yet further strengthened the links of a friendship commenced in their childhood; so that when the peace of 1815 gave to Europe, wearied out by war, a time of rest, our two friends placed their experience and capabilities at the service of their country, as they had already offered the tribute of their blood and courage, each taking on himself the tie and responsibility of married life. Both married on the same day the two daughters of a neighbor whom the war had ruined; and if their brides were little endowed with worldly possessions, at least they were rich in virtues, and that is a wealth which equals the former, although it be much less sought after, and, we may even add, more difficult to find.

Unfortunately these marriages so alike in happiness were far less so in their duration; for at the end of two years Gertrude, the wife of the Baron Frederic, died, leaving in the heart and life of her husband a void which nothing could fill. Many were the efforts made to console the poor baron, many were the mothers who lavished on him their sweetest smiles; many were the maidens who directed on him their chaste regards, and who pictured to themselves a brilliant future in which his name and fortune held a prominent place; but all was useless, for the baron remained quite insensible to these efforts and designs. His friend, and even his sister-in-law, counselled him to seek in a new marriage that close and loving friendship which he was so well adapted to appreciate; but at length, seeing him so obstinately faithful to the memory of Gertrude, they feared to afflict him, and so ceased to press him on the subject, trusting all to time, which, nevertheless, rolled on without bringing any change to the baron's regrets and resolutions. His was one of those strongly organized minds where the impressions, lively as they are lasting, resist the stronger that they are unaccompanied by outward efforts. Hence was it that the baron supported, without giving way an instant, the blow which had struck him, and yet the wound in his heart remained as sensitive and as painful as on that day when with his own hands he placed his well-beloved Gertrude in her shroud. Old age came on, bringing with it its longing for rest, and then the two friends quitted their public life as they had entered it, side by side. The baron went to live with his brother, for thus he designated his friend; and only once every year left his castle to visit his own property and tenants, toward whom he showed a kindness without limit. Some of these tenants abused that kindness, and paid their rent year after year, with tears, excuses, and complaints, the worthy baron leaving them unmolested; and when his steward spoke to him of sending off the estate these families, he replied: "Better that this should happen to me, who have patience with them, than send them away to those who probably would have none." No sooner was he returned to the castle than he forgot all these things, and recommenced spoiling and fondling his nephews and nieces, of whom he had no small number; for the Count Shrann was a descendant of those ancient families who seemed to have presented the prolific virtue of the golden age; nor did the number of his nephews and nieces give any anxious thoughts to the baron, since often would he say to his friend:

"Why torment yourself so much about the future of your children? You will always have enough to settle them all in life; and besides, I myself, who have but cousins in I do not know what remote degree of affinity, I find it but just that these my nephews should inherit my property before them."

And then the count became silent, for he found the baron's answer quite natural, and such as he himself should have made, had their positions been reversed. Between these two men, so closely united by affection and so similar in heart and understanding, there was but one subject on which their point of view was diametrically opposed, and that was the one with which they were engaged at the opening of this chapter. Count Shrann, who had been brought up by a loving and pious mother, was a Catholic both in heart and soul; whilst the Baron Frederic had, on the contrary, lost both his parents at a very early age, and had been brought up by his uncle, who boasted of being the friend and the protector of the Encyclopedists; so that Frederic had been educated in that cold and barren school of materialism which Voltaire has the doubtful honor of having founded. Baron Frederic believed in nothing spiritual, a circumstance which caused great chagrin to his friend, whence it happened that on this, as on so many former occasions, the two friends, after the dinner-hour, had passed long hours in smoking and drinking huge tankards of beer, whilst making the same questions and the same answers on this, the one great subject of their difference in opinion and faith.

"So you believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the baron.

"Certainly I do," replied the count.

"It is very strange," answered the baron; and then both recommenced to smoke yet more vigorously than before. After a lapse of time during which two less serious men would have discussed three or four such subjects of conversation, the count recommenced: "What do you see so strange in my remark?"

"It is to see a mind such as yours give way to similar ideas and tales fit only, to say the best of it, to frighten children with."

"I, for my part, am yet more astonished to see a man so logical as yourself refuse to believe it; and how dare you treat as springing from weakness of mind that belief which you cannot deny fortifies the soul and places it above the blows of adversity?"

"The soul, the soul," replied the baron, "what is the soul? A name without a substance, and I do not know what of indefinable and vague. A something that we can neither see nor touch, and which eludes both the senses and the understanding. I, for my part, believe in nothing but that which I can see or touch."

"I would remind you, my dear friend, that there are a crowd of things in which you believe, without ever having seen them."

"It is because science explains those things, and I believe in her."

"Science! why, you are too clever not to admit of her inability to give you a full explanation of any one thing. Science proves that the fact exists, but she does not explain the first cause of its existence. She discovers the eternal laws which rule the universe, and it is by that means that she conducts the unprejudiced spirit from the discovery of things created to the knowledge of the Creator of all things; but the first causes of these same laws are utterly unknown to her."

"And what tells you that she will not yet discover them?"

"Never! For if the human understanding is immense, yet it is not infinite. We have seen many discoveries and marvels; our great-grandchildren will witness yet many more; but these will not be produced in any more developed sense than that which I just now indicated to you. The first causes will ever rest unknown to them as for us."

"But where are the proofs which prove the existence of the soul, and render it palpable to the eyes of the understanding?"

"The eyes of the heart, do they not equal those of the understanding?" quickly answered the count. "What! You feel within yourself a soul which thinks and which loves, which possesses in itself a longing for happiness, a thirst for truth, so utterly beyond the happiness and the truths of this world that it can only be a souvenir or a revelation, from on high, of something purer and more perfect; you love the good and you spurn the evil, even to self-sacrifice; nay, more, you prefer death to the evil; you hear in the depths of your heart that powerful voice which cries to all humanity that the soul cannot die; and yet you ask for a proof of the existence of this soul, and of its immortality! Death is visible to us on every side. He menaces us; he presses upon us; all that is above, beneath, on each side of us, is dead or dying. Man alone drives back before him that supreme law of final decay and oblivion; he whose life is comparatively much shorter than that of all other existences in this world, he alone hopes for an eternity which has no type here below, and which he could not even have conceived in himself, had it not been revealed to him. Surrounded by errors, he dreams the truth; wretched in this life, he dreams of a happiness without alloy; mortal, he dreams of immortality. Is not all this an infallible proof of his future destiny? God, who created man, would not he be both cruel and unjust had he given him all these profound aspirations toward a future state of happiness, only to plunge him finally in the abyss of eternal death? That secret voice speaks to you also, my friend; it resounds in the silence of your heart, and offers to you, as it does to others, its consoling hopes. Why do you not listen to it? When you saw before you, pale and discolored, destined to an inexorable decay, the body of her whom you so much loved; when the mouth that had so lately spoken to you, closed for ever; when those eyes, in which you had ever read their tenderness, became fixed, dull, and without expression; when that hand, which had but a moment before sought yours to press it for a last time, fell for ever powerless, equally insensible to the kisses with which you covered it, and to your tears, which rained on it—" Here the baron, without trying to hide his emotion, dried, with the back of his hand, the tears that this recollection of his beloved Gertrude caused him. The count continued: "That mouth, those eyes, that hand, they are the same; but where is the soul which animated them? Did you not then hear that interior voice which called with yet greater force, Thou shalt see her again? That body which the earth will hide to-morrow is but the form, and not the essence—the outward shape, but not the living spirit. A soul which you loved, and which rendered to thee an equal affection, animated that form, and rendered it palpable to your senses; that soul has fled, and the body falls back lifeless. The outward form rests here motionless and insensible, but the soul has remounted toward that celestial country where it shall await your coming, ready again to love you with an affection which shall have to suffer no second separation. And this is so true, my friend, that even whilst you deny this consciousness that the soul has of its future life and of its existence, you yourself obey that feeling; for you are faithful, not to the simple memory of Gertrude, but to Gertrude whom you feel to be still living, though far distant from you, and you desire to be able to say to her, when the moment of your meeting shall come: 'Thou seest that no other love has ever been mingled with thine in my heart; my own beloved one, thou didst wait for me, and I am come as full of thy recollection and of thy love as on that day when thou didst leave me.'"

Whilst the count was thus speaking, the baron had literally hidden himself in clouds of smoke, out of which came forth, by and by, a voice, trembling and changed by deep emotion, which answered:

"Ah! that I could believe as you do! In taking away from men these consoling thoughts, the materialists cried loudly that they were but working for the happiness of humanity yet wrapped in the shades of superstition; whilst, in truth, they were but plunging it into a gulf yet more profound and more implacable; for there is no real happiness possible where there exists a constant fear of losing that happiness. I know very well that the error was much more pleasant than the truth, and that in place of the hope, perhaps false, but certainly full of consolation, to re-find our friends one day, they have left us but the terrible certainty of having for ever lost them, and that they leave us with the heavy burden of misery which is crushing human nature, after having broken the very support that aided man to bear its weight. Now that the evil is done, how remedy it? And if I do not believe, what must I do that I may believe?"

"Acknowledge humbly our utter helplessness; humble the pride of an imperfect reason, which is irritated by the thought that there is something above it; listen to our conscience which speaks within us; and then, meekly kneeling down before the God who has created the universe, repeat to him, with simplicity and faith, these words of the blind man in the gospel, who cried, 'Lord, that I may receive my sight!' God is not deaf to persevering prayer. Pray, therefore, and you shall see likewise."

"Certainly," said the baron, "if I saw, I should at once believe; but who ever saw a soul?"

"My great-grandfather did," answered the count.

"You are joking."

"Not at all. Adolphus Shrann, my great-grandfather, saw not only one soul, but even two!"

"He was dreaming, then."

"No, for he knew what he was going to see, and that thought alone was sufficient to keep him awake."

"Ah! then in that case somebody made a jest of him, and by some optical delusion caused him to believe that he had seen a veritable supernatural vision."

"No, I assure you it was not so," replied the count. "I am determined to relate the history to you in full, this evening; and," added he, with a voice changed by the ardent friendship that he felt for the baron, "I should esteem myself really happy if its recital could cause you to kneel down side by side with me before the altar of that God whom you are so worthy to know. It is but there that we are separated, and did you know all that my true friendship suffers in the thought that, after living these long years together, and after having shared all the trials and the pains of this life until our old age, notwithstanding this, I should yet be alone when the hour comes to receive the recompense. Ah! my dear Frederic, that single thought would suffice to empoison the joys of paradise."

Here the two friends warmly shook hands, and after having again replenished their tankards and their pipes, the count commenced the story that you are going to hear.

"You know," said the count, "that the Shrann family has always been cited as one of the most fruitful in all Germany."

"And you! you certainly have not derogated from the example of your ancestors," said the baron.

"Neither had the Count Franz, the same who was raised from the rank of baron to that of count by Ferdinand III., in 1645, since he was the father of fifteen children, eight boys and seven girls; and of these lads Adolphus, the seventh son, was the only one who remained to perpetuate the name and race, for the others gave their lives to defend their country and the empire. But if this numerous offspring was an honor to the family, it was also a great cause of anxiety to the count; it being a fact that though a numerous family be a source of fortune to a poor farmer, such is not the case with a poor nobleman; and it was no slight task to place advantageously all these children, so that they might worthily bear and uphold their family name. Count Franz made, therefore, the most active endeavors to marry his daughters and to establish his sons; and he succeeded as well as he had hoped, since only one son remained at home, and that was Albert, the youngest child; nor did the future of this the last scion of his race much disturb the count, destined as he was, by him, from his very youth, to enter the church. But divine Providence often smiles at and overthrows our wisest calculations, and this is what occurred in Albert's case; for, notwithstanding the serious tendency given to his education, it was found that of the eight sons of the count this, the youngest, showed the greatest courage and taste for war. This martial spirit was the great despair of his tutor; for the lad left on the smallest pretext his studies and his books to play with an old rusty sword that he had found in one of the lumber-rooms of the castle, and with this he amused himself for hours, fencing against his desk or stool, and shouting all the war cries and songs that he had heard or read. When the vexed tutor complained of his pupil's conduct to the count, and of his little attention to his more serious studies, joined to his openly expressed contempt for them, the count answered, 'Bah! never mind; time will change all this, and you know that it is only natural that he should have imbibed a little of the family taste for war.' The seventh son, Adolphus, likewise distinguished himself by his recklessness of danger and by his great courage. This conformity of tastes, yet more than the similarity of their ages, had closely united these the two youngest brothers together; so that when the day came that the younger saw the elder leave home as a lieutenant in the army, to engage in that life of adventure and danger of which they had so often talked together, he was seized with a yet stronger repugnance to the future destined for him. The prospect of spending his days in the retirement of the cloister, instead of sharing with his brother the glorious achievements of a soldier's life, inspired him with not only a strong distaste for this future, but even with an aversion to all that then surrounded him. Albert fell into a great despair and lethargy; no longer did his tutor dread that rusty sword with which Albert had been wont to frighten him; not that his studies progressed any better for that; for although he read with pleasure the Iliad and the AEneid, he shrunk back with distaste from the study of theology, and when any observations were made to him on the subject, alleged that 'he should always know enough to cause him to die from ennui.' Not that the sentiment of religious feeling was dead within him, far from that; he was, on the contrary, animated with the liveliest and most sincere faith; nor was it that he felt an invincible repugnance to the obligations of the priesthood, for he was generous, sober, charitable, and patient, and therefore esteemed slightly the sacrifices that the ecclesiastical state requires. What he disliked and dreaded above all was a life of uniformity and of repose, such as seemed to him the life of a priest. This antipathy to the future for which he was destined grew from day to day, when, unable at last to fight any longer against his inclinations, he armed himself with all his resolution, and respectfully represented to his father his invincible dislike to becoming a priest, and asked of him the favor of being allowed to become a soldier. Great was the discomfiture of the count on hearing this demand. What was he to do? he who had made all his arrangements in order that Albert might become a bishop; and here was this son who in place of bearing the mitre and pastoral staff, desired nothing less than to wield the sword and don the coat of mail.

"'It is very perplexing,' at last answered the count, after having scratched his ear several times; 'this idea of yours completely upsets all my plans; but rather than see you become a bad priest it shall be as you desire. Although,' again added he with a heavy sigh, 'it is very perplexing.'

"Albert, after having again explained to his father all the reasons for his repugnance to the life of a priest, continued, 'You see, my dear father, that it is not a taste for the pleasures of the world that drives me from the priesthood; it is only my dislike to the monotony of such a life that hinders me from embracing it. My vocation leads me to follow a career of danger and of change, and not one of ease and uniformity. But I think that there is a means of conciliating the ideas that your tenderness had suggested for me and my own tastes.'

"'I desire nothing better than that,' answered the count with visible chagrin, 'but how to do so, that is the question. I wish you to become a bishop, and you desire to become a captain; now, we are no longer in the days when bishops wore a suit of mail inside their robes.'

"'That is true, dear father; but you could place me in a position to become one day a knight-commander,' (here the count lifted up his head with an air of satisfaction.) 'The order of St. John of Jerusalem,' continued Albert, 'is a glorious order, assimilating to the church by its vows and its constitutions, and to the army by its obligations and labors. The Turks are now menacing Christendom; what more glorious use can one make of one's sword than to defend one's brothers in Jesus Christ, and to oppose one's self against the barbarity of the Mussulman, who already regards Europe as a wild beast does his prey? What more glorious destiny than to consecrate one's courage and one's life to force back even to the very sands of Asia those hordes of infidels whose domination, similar to a pestilential atmosphere, has brought ruin and death upon the fertile countries where it extends?

"'If, then, as I hope, you will consent to my desires, I shall find in that career the occasion to place in a yet higher rank the glorious name that you have given me; and thus both my ancestors and yourself shall have reason to be proud of their descendant."

"My worthy ancestor, on hearing this proposition, felt a similar satisfaction to that which a man would feel who, after being shut up in a chest during some hours, could at last stretch his limbs out again in liberty. Therefore was it that he seized eagerly a proposition which drew him out of a great difficulty; for between ourselves, be it said, the worthy man was more accustomed to fighting than to solving difficult questions. It was easy for the count to prove the sixteen quarters of nobility which the rules of the order required for the admission of Germans; moreover, he had several friends in the order whose influence he made use of; nothing, therefore, opposed itself to the realization of Albert's desires; and, in consequence, a few weeks after the above related conversation, he left Germany, and became page to Nicholas Coroner, then Grand Master of the order, and Governor of Malta. In this position he did not fail to make himself very soon remarked by his dauntless courage and impetuous audacity. The requisite occasions did not fail him; each day the galleys of the order darted from their ports, as the eagle from his eyrie, and, powerful as the eagle, seized on some one of the innumerable Turkish pirates which were then ravaging the coasts of the Mediterranean, burning villages, and carrying off their wretched inhabitants to reduce them into a painful and degrading slavery. In this manner the order rendered the most important services to Europe, whilst the most adventurous spirit in it found means, in this incessant warfare, to satisfy his thirst for danger. Albert, ardent and indefatigable, scorning danger and braving Death, who seemed to shrink back before so much bravery and audacity, fought so often and so well, that scarcely was the time of his novitiate finished, than, by the general consent of his companions in arms, and the approbation of the grand master, he was created knight. In truth, it was impossible to show more valor and self-diffidence. This latter quality shows forth the more, that it was not an ordinary virtue in the order. Some years thus rolled on, during which the bravery of Albert had caused him to be known and remarked in all the commanderies of Europe; but the time was come when at length he should appear on a field more worthy of his talents.

"I will not here give you a recital of the events which brought the troops of Mohammed IV. under the walls of Vienna; since, in the first place, you recollect them as well as I do; and in the second place, it is too sad a thought for him who feels within him a soul truly German, to reflect that there was a day when German hearts beat with fear before the standards of Mohammed! At the time when the Hungarians, with a blindness that even their excess of patriotism does not excuse, called into the heart of Europe those born enemies of European civilization, Albert was in Germany. At the first news which reached him of the march of Mustapha on Vienna, he hurried to the commanderies that were nearest to him, and animating the zeal of the knights, united together without great difficulty a few of his companions, with whom he hastened on to that city. They reached Vienna on the very day that Leopold I. left it; and terrible was the consternation then reigning in that town, abandoned by those who ought to have been the first to face the danger and animate the courage of others by their example.

"The brave Count of Staremberg commanded the fortress which he did not dare hope to save, although he was determined to die in its defence. The aid that Albert brought was joyfully accepted by him; for he had but eight or ten thousand men to defend the city against the Turkish army, whose number was three hundred thousand; and besides this, the city was badly provisioned and insufficiently armed. Nevertheless, the defence was organized in the best manner possible; arms were distributed to all the citizens; and even the schoolboys were taught to carry arms, and perform the active service of the defence of the walls; whilst the entire population determined to suffer famine, and all the other horrors of a prolonged siege, rather than yield tamely to the enemy. These preparations made, they awaited the infidels; nor did they wait long; for in a few days after the departure of the emperor, the Turkish army encamped before Vienna, and opened its first trench. Then began in earnest that terrible siege. Albert performed prodigies of valor; now directing a sortie, then driving back an assault, ever in the foremost rank, he, as it were, multiplied himself, going on every side; he foresaw and provided against all emergencies; his courage excited even the most timid, whilst his unchangeable calm reassured their fears. In the midst of all this peril, which seemed endless, he alone seemed at his ease; so much so, that the Count of Staremberg used to say, 'Oh! that I had only one hundred knights like him; for then, in place of resting here blocked up, like a rat in his hole, I would drive back, and follow up these three hundred thousand Turks to the very walls of Constantinople!' During all this time, notwithstanding the pressing demands of the Pope, Innocent IX., and in spite of the necessity which bound the other Christian nations to prevent Vienna's falling into the hands of the infidels, the aid so much needed was but slowly organized. Already had the siege lasted two months, and nothing had yet happened to relieve the despair of the wretched inhabitants, already weakened by famine. There seemed to them no alternative between a cruel and lingering death and a yet more painful slavery. Almost were they reduced to the last extremities. It was quite impossible to obtain provisions, and the ammunition was nearly exhausted, whilst many of the cannon had become useless for service; and yet no voice was heard that spoke of surrender. Soldiers and citizens, alike excited by the example and firmness of the chiefs, supported with courage and resignation all the horrors of a desperate defence. At last the signals and banners of King John Sobieski were seen from the walls as he came to their rescue, leading the combined forces of Europe. It was time! The King of Poland, notwithstanding the immense inferiority of his troops in point of numbers, hesitated not a moment to take the most favorable position for giving battle to the enemy. Mustapha, on his side, divided his troops into two divisions, the one destined to make a last and desperate assault upon the city, and to enter it by main force through the breaches already made in its walls; whilst the second division was to stop the passage of Sobieski, and to hinder him from giving any aid to the besieged. But the impetuosity of the attack of the Christians was such that the battle became but a rout on the side of the Mussulmans, as they fled before their pursuers on every side, and were as soon and as completely dispersed as is a wisp of straw before a hurricane. Vienna free, Europe breathed again, being once more delivered from the immediate fear of the crescent, whilst awaiting the day when the Mussulman should be for ever driven back to the arid sands from whence he came. This heroic defence spread a new lustre upon the arms and reputation of the order. But none of its knights had acquired a similar renown to that of Albert. The name of this young warrior was in every mouth, his souvenir in every heart, and he shared with John Sobieski the enthusiastic ovation made by the Viennese to their deliverers. The loudest acclamations of admiration and gratitude greeted him during the day that he accompanied the King of Poland, who, still covered with the blood of his enemies, went in solemn state to the cathedral of St. Stephen, there to assist at the Te Deum which was sung in thanksgiving to God for this miraculous delivery of the city from the Turks. Mustapha, forced to make such a speedy retreat, had left in the possession of the Christians all his treasures, tents, and baggage. Among the spoil was found the standard of the Prophet. This, it was decided, should be offered to the pope as a gage and as a memorial of the victory, and it was Albert who was chosen to perform this honorable mission. His old father nearly died with joy on learning of the glorious renown of his son; and I leave you to guess if he did not praise himself in his heart for not having resisted the desires of Albert. The old count foresaw in the future his family giving a grand-master to the Order of St. John, and he trembled with happiness in thinking of the honor which would thus result to the Shrann race and name. In fact, one could hardly say where would have stopped the worldly honors of Albert, had not God reserved for him a yet more sweet and glorious recompense for his labors in his service."

At this point of his story, the count took a few minutes' repose, minutes that were fully employed, to judge by the manner in which he emptied the tankard that stood before him; and as the two friends did nothing without each other's aid or example, the baron hastened to imitate his friend; and when his tankard left his lips, there did not remain sufficient in it to satisfy the thirst of a wren. Then, grasping with a firm hand the immense jug of beer which awaited their good pleasure, he filled his own glass and passed the jug on to the count, who, with an equal dignity and silence, took his share. It is true that the baron paid but a slight attention to all these details of a family history that the count so complacently related to him; perhaps he was getting impatient for the appearance of the two souls that had been promised him; but he let no indication of his impatience escape him, and continued to smoke on with great tranquillity, puffing forth clouds of smoke which seemed timed to the cadenced sounds of an old clock that stood beside him, whose sculptured oak case would have delighted the taste of an antiquary. At length the count recommenced: "The Turks appeared to have abandoned their projects upon Germany, but the war yet continued with activity between themselves and the order and the Venetians on the shores of the Mediterranean. Notwithstanding the greatest sacrifices, and the most valiant efforts on the part of the Turks, Candia had fallen into the hands of the order; a new expedition was then resolved upon to lay siege to Coron, and Hector de La Tour de Maubourg, having been chosen as its commander, he made choice of Albert for his lieutenant.

"Upon one of the galleys that the pope had joined to the allied fleets of the Knights of St. John and of the Venetians, the young Giovanni Balbo, only heir to one of the most distinguished names in the republic of Venice, had been sent out by his father. This illustrious family had long been a friend to our house, and, in fact, we counted several alliances between the two families. When, therefore, Giovanni learnt that Albert was in the fleet, he made several attempts to become acquainted with him; and succeeded so well, that in a short time they became the greatest friends in the world.

"On this event, so slight in its appearance, nevertheless depended the destiny of Albert. You must have remarked, my friend, that it is the same with us all. The acts the most important in our lives, those which decide our future, and from which result our happiness or misery in this world, have always as their first commencement, some circumstance which is perfectly indifferent in itself, but the results of which have an influence on our entire destinies.

"One would say that divine Providence mocked our proud reason, in thus making use of events which at first sight seem so utterly unfitted to arrive at the end which it proposes to itself; and I might even add, that this impenetrable mystery would alone suffice to eyes less wilfully blinded than your own, to prove the existence of an unseen power that is unrestrained by human laws and prejudices. Does God owe to each one of us a miracle? Ought he to suspend for each individual man the eternal laws which govern the universe? Can we not believe in him unless we see the very rivers flow back to their sources? Does he not manifest himself to us at each instant of our lives, on each side of us and in us? Is not the admirable connection of events which exists in this world sufficient to make the certitude of his power and of his incessant action shine forth to the vision of the soul, as shines forth before the eyes of the body the brilliant multitude of planets that have each their appointed path in the wide space of heaven? The siege was terrible, and its success cost to the Order of Malta one and twenty of its bravest knights; Hector de la Tour de Maubourg was among the number of the dead, and Albert, who had flown to his side to protect him, had fallen covered with wounds, which caused his life to be despaired of. His youth, the strength of his constitution, and, above all, the tender care taken of him by his friend Giovanni, finally triumphed over the severity of his wounds, and as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to bear the fatigues of the voyage, Giovanni brought him to Venice to visit his family, who received him with the warmest hospitality. I have told you that Giovanni was the only heir of the Balbo family; this was but partly true, since there were two daughters, Flaminia, who had then attained her eighteenth year, and Antonia, who was but seventeen.

"Nothing could be more unlike than these two sisters, Flaminia and Antonia. Although both were in looks and in character equally charming, Heaven had gifted them with very dissimilar talents and tastes. Nevertheless, this did not impede the existence of an intimate friendship between these two natures so diametrically opposed; and, later in their lives, it proved no hinderance to a complete confidence. It is thanks to this confidence—that arose between them one day by reason of an imperious necessity of mutual aid and sympathy—that I can now describe the more intimate particularities of this history. Antonia, as you may judge from the portrait of her hanging in the room, was one of that sort of beauties that seem to overflow with vigor and life. Her complexion slightly brunette; her eyes of a deep black, ever glistening under her well-arched eye-brows, notwithstanding the depth of her eye-lashes; her mouth ever smiling, with its full and firmly designed lips; her perfectly chiselled nose, whose nostrils dilated at every instant; and, above all, the extreme vivacity of her face, where was portrayed, as in a mirror, every emotion that agitated her, even the most fugitive; all in her appearance indicated one of those vigorous natures that have need of real physical exertion. An over-rich development of physical forces impedes the flight of the imagination. Thus, Antonia was always remarked for the vivacity of her impressions, for the impetuosity of her sentiments, and for the sallies of her quick and brilliant spirit. But that world of reverie, peopled with vague and indefinable forms; that world illumined by a supernatural light, where we catch the glimpses of a happiness unknown here below; that world which is created by the soul and colored by the imagination, was to her quite unknown. Whilst her sister delighted in all this, and listened with her whole heart to those harmonious voices which spoke to her of a coming happiness penetrating and sweet as the joys of heaven, Antonia was bounding like a young fawn among the trees of their garden, or, mounted on a spirited horse, rapidly ascended the paths of the mountains that surrounded the town. The same impetuosity was to be remarked in her sympathies and antipathies; she could not moderate her expression of them, nor did she even seek to impose upon herself a useless constraint on this subject. On the other hand, Flaminia seemed already to bear in her entire appearance the impress of those sorrows that she was destined to suffer. Her look, so sweet and sad even in its smile, was half veiled with her eyelids, and gave to her face an indefinable expression of melancholy. That expression could be again found in her delicately shaped mouth, and even in her movements full of languor and grace. Whilst Antonia, lively and petulant, employed by every outward effort the too abundant forces of her life and youth, Flaminia seemed to place hers in reserve for the terrible moment of need. She concentrated in the depths of her soul all her impressions; nor could she give to herself a reason for so doing. She had the consciousness of her exquisite sensibility, and protected it, under the shield of indifference and affected calm, against all contact that could have wounded it. But under this apparent indolence an attentive eye could have easily recognized the marks of an ardent soul and of a strong nervous organization. A sudden flame would at moments lighten up those glances usually veiled in indifference, the soft and musical voice took an accent of enthusiasm, and her whole expression changed, being animated by the power of an emotion that she no longer restrained, and whose vibrations were the more violent, because her soul, far from pouring itself on all that surrounded her, as did Antonia's, was one of those that at a given hour in life is destined to concentrate all its force on a single thought and on an only affection. Outwardly cold and impassible, her excessive sensibility showed itself by scarcely perceptible signs; but later in life, happy to find at her side a heart filled with similar ideas, all this ice melted. Is there not in us, at the moment when life commences, that is to say, at the epoch when the soul awakes from the long slumber of infancy, a vague presentiment of our future destinies? For the same reason that we have so often seen the bravest soldiers tremble on the morning of a battle, feeling beforehand that death will call them during the day, is there not likewise in us a voice which warns us of the trials that we shall have later in our lives to endure? The birds have a presentiment of the coming storm, even when the atmosphere is yet full of splendor; the very insects that crawl upon the ground foresee in the autumn the rigors of the approaching winter, and envelop their eggs with a double covering of silk; and why should man be less favored than the birds or insects? Why should he be the only creature that is delivered up, as it were, with his hands and feet bound, to the rigors of the future? It is possible that Flaminia obeyed that sentiment of moral modesty that causes us to hide from all eyes our better qualities—those secret riches of our hearts, that we may lavish them without stint upon the hidden object that we have chosen. She knew herself to be incapable of half-loving any object, and she felt that her heart was a fragile instrument; that, if touched by a skilful hand, it would render harmonious sounds, but that it would infallibly break under a rude or awkward touch; and she wished to preserve it from such a fate. None of those surrounding her suspected the power of this instrument; on the contrary, her great outward calmness passed for the evident indication of a certain coldness of heart, whilst the expansive nature of her sister was considered as the sign of an extreme sensibility. Flaminia was much grieved at being thus misunderstood, and very often, in the silence of the night, bitter tears flowed from her eyes; very often the ivory crucifix which hung at the head of her couch, saw opening before it that soul so full of purity and love, that came to seek, at that inexhaustible source, a present consolation and a future strength. Sometimes she fancied that she heard in herself the distant mutterings of the heart's tempest; then she prayed with ardor, almost feverishly, as she listened to the murmur within her of those mysterious voices which warned her of a near peril, and told her to spread around her those riches of affection full of loving ardor, that then devoured her, and that one day would consume her. In these moments of instinctive alarm, she drew herself yet closer to God, hiding herself under the shadow of his protecting hand, ever lifted up over those who with faith invoke it; and then she felt herself reassured. At such moments as these was it that she felt herself to be so completely alone, notwithstanding the parental tenderness that surrounded her, and she suffered by this loneliness. In truth, Flaminia was right—she was alone; for though both the Prince and Princess Balbo cherished their daughter, yet time seemed to have passed on for her alone, and not for them. The child had merged into the young girl; the naïve graces of the infant had given place to the more opened charms of youth, yet they had remarked nothing of all this. They dreamt not even that parental affection ought to be modelled after the child of whom it is the object, and ought to transform itself and grow with that child. They did not understand that the protecting tenderness accorded to the infant who shelters himself under it as does a bird in its nest, becomes insufficient for the heart that time has developed, and that has need of leaning upon sentiments less protecting and more friendly. One of the most dangerous shoals in the difficult task of educating children, is doubtless that of noticing the first moments when the child whom we have held until then under our hand, and caused, as it were, to live of our own life, lays aside the trammels of infancy, and seeks to fly with his own wings. It is then that we ought to know how so to modify our affection that we may inspire that freedom and that confidence in ourselves that will protect this second period of life, as a salutary fear protects the first.

"Now for the development of these sentiments, so fragile and delicate, we must seize the instant when the child commences to become a man, when he first feels awakening in him thoughts and sensations that are his own, and not simply the echo or reflection of our own. It is at that moment, and then only, that we can ever arouse such confidence. If we allow this fleeting and critical period of his existence to escape us, never can we hope to recall it; and however powerful may be his sense of filial affection, the child will never again show us that confidence that we have repulsed; we shall have left his young heart, just awakening to the dawn of life, in an isolation that is always painful, and oftentimes dangerous, since it lends to the already strong voice of the passions the charms of solitude and mystery. Unhappily—and this is almost always through an ill-advised tenderness—we too often close our eyes to this transformation; habit blinds us, and the child escapes from our control. Such had been the case with Flaminia. Her mother was one of the most virtuous and excellent of women; the prince, as I have already told you, adored his children; but both of them, as well as Giovanni, who was fifteen years older than the eldest of his sisters, regarded these two lovely girls but as the two children who so lately had charmed them by their naïveté and grace. This situation, in which the two sisters shared, should have sooner given rise to a confidence equal to their friendship; but besides that their difference of tastes often separated them, no exterior event had yet happened to show them the power of their mutual affection and the community of ideas that ought to be its consequence. Thus Flaminia lived alone and gave herself up without reserve to the sweet charm of vague reverie; she listened with a deep joy to those mysterious aspirations that spoke to her of happiness, nor could she assign any form to these thoughts, that, all uncertain as they were, yet threw her into a delicious trouble. She sought solitude, and spent long hours sitting at the balcony of her window, her forehead leaning on her long white hands, while her eyes filled with tears that had no sorrow as their source, as she regarded the deep and large purple shadows which the setting sun cast on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Although she was unconscious of the meaning of these frequent reveries, and would have been unable to explain the reason of that melancholy, so full of mingled pain and pleasure, into which she loved to plunge herself, yet she hid most carefully from every eye the state of her mind, dreading above all things lest any one should suspect the happiness she felt in yielding to its charm. At the moment when providence was about to bring together Albert and Flaminia, he also found himself in some such a state of mind as that which I have just portrayed. A glorious renown had at first seemed to him the only thing in this world worthy of envy; but that idol so ardently followed had been, little by little, despoiled of its brilliant prestige; the nearer he approached it, the more faint and dim became the aureole of splendor with which he had believed it surrounded; and when he at last saw himself in full possession of his desire, when the renown of his name had resounded to the most distant commanderies of his order, which regarded him as its firmest support and most assured hope; then he saw with affright that a glorious name is insufficient in itself, and that it must be regarded in a Christian life, or at least in connection with some one who is dear to us, and whose heart would rejoice and sympathize with our glory. When Albert at last understood the truth, he felt himself sad and unhappy; for be looked vainly around him—he was alone! An immense void then made itself felt in his soul—a void that even his glory was unable to hide from him, and which friendship was powerless to fill. Like Flaminia, he felt himself isolated on the earth; but while her solitude was sweetened by a hope as vague as her thoughts and desires, that of Albert was a bottomless abyss, full of discouragement and despair.

"The profound darkness of night then fell upon his soul, an obscurity similar to those sombre and cold nights in winter, when the eye sees not a single star piercing the sky covered with clouds; and when the sad heart hears but the moans of the wind that bends the tops of the bare trees as it passes over them, mingled with the boding cry of the birds of prey which slowly wheel around in the thick and misty atmosphere. A lassitude had fallen on him similar to that which a traveller feels at the sight of a straight and monotonous road which extends as far as the eye can reach in a dry and burning plain. Seeing nothing around him that seemed worthy either a desire or an effort, he allowed himself to be carried slowly on by time toward the common end; nor did he hasten that course by his vows; for even whilst he firmly believed in the joys of eternity, he felt not his soul drawn toward them. If he had run forward to meet death, it was through his natural intrepidity; for he felt in its presence but the same desolating indifference that he had shown at the moment of his recovery to life. Such were the secret sentiments of Albert and Flaminia when their mutual destiny placed them for the first time in presence of each other in the ancient salon of the Palace Balbo. We are both of us, my dear Frederic, so far distant from the time when our hearts first experienced these impressions of affection, that there now remains to us but a very slight recollection."

"You are deceived," interrupted the baron; "from the day when for the first time I saw my poor Gertrude, until that when I placed her in her tomb, I have forgotten nothing of all that has passed between us. There is not an hour of that much-regretted time which is not present in my memory; not an incident, however slight it may have been, that I cannot recall in even its slightest details!"

"You can the more easily understand, then," continued the count, "how it was that these two souls united themselves so closely the one to the other, that there soon existed between them but a single life, a single taste, and a single thought; and how it was that they both preserved, even until their very last moment, the most absolute certainty of their mutual affection, without ever having interchanged a single word on the subject. Scarcely had they been but a few days together, when already Albert had penetrated into all the thoughts of Flaminia. He read in her heart as in an open book; he divined all its secrets; that soul which to all others was closed, he saw opening, and breathed all its perfumes< foresaw all its destinies! Was it, then, in a few commonplace conversations that he had gained so complete an insight into that heart habitually closed? No; he had not judged Flaminia by any acquaintance that he had gained of her character by her words or actions; he had only looked upon her, and instantly, by intuition, he had understood her; and this was so true, that there were moments when it might have been said that he saw her think. On her side, Flaminia saw the soul of Albert by that same light which I should call supernatural, did I not consider it as one of the eternal laws instituted by the Creator. She knew him to be loyal and generous, and she saw his unchangeable goodness and patience; not because he had had any occasion of showing them before her, but because a lively and penetrating light thus showed him to her. All that Albert felt found in her an echo; the mirror does not more faithfully produce the image than did her soul his slightest sensations. By his side she felt happy, because she felt herself understood and loved. A new existence then opened for her; movement and activity succeeded to her vague reveries and habitual indolence; new horizons showed themselves each day to her soul. Nature became more beautiful, the flowers more sweet, the sun more brilliant; it seemed to her that her eyes had been shut until then, and that they now opened for the first time. At the same time that a new affection acquired over her soul a stronger influence than her affection for her family had yet exercised on her, even these became more lively and more complete. Nevertheless, it was no longer at that source whence she had so long drawn her sensations and ideas that she now went to seek them: all came to her from Albert, or had reference to him. She saw by his eyes and thought by his ideas; her tastes, her desires, were nothing else than the tastes and desires of Albert. Were he present, she seemed to live with delight; in his absence it seemed to her that her life lost its intensity, and all became sad and indifferent to her; he was the soul that gave life to all. In a word, he had become a part of herself, an indispensable condition for the perfection of her being and existence. I have no need to tell you that she did not render to herself so exact an account of the state of her soul as that which I have just sketched to you. She had, in truth, the consciousness of the change that was taking place in her, but the reasons of this change remained enveloped in a profound obscurity that her spirit could not penetrate; she obeyed her feelings of tenderness without being able to analyze them. And yet the more she felt that Albert alone filled her heart and thought, the more she instinctively enveloped herself exteriorly, with regard to him, in her mantle of ordinary indifference. But when hazard left her alone with Albert, then a sudden transformation took place in her. All that indifference melted away, as do the last snows of springtime under the heat of the sun. She delivered herself up unrestrainedly to the generous enthusiasm of her loving nature, her expression became more gentle, her voice more tender, and her heart beat faster in her bosom, which rose and fell agitated by an emotion so delicious and powerful that it resembled even grief; for in our weak nature, joy and suffering have a very near resemblance."

Concluded In Next Number.

John Sterling.

Whatever importance may attach to the life and writings of John Sterling, is due to the fact of his having been a representative man. Without being supremely original, without anything wonderful in his career, he has been made the subject of a memoir by two eminent men, Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle. The one represents Anglican belief, which is partial infidelity, and the other nineteenth-century belief, which is infidelity, pure and simple; and both the one and the other have drawn the portrait of their friend and hero in colors of their own mind. Archdeacon Hare has traced with regret the lapse of Sterling into unbelief, while Carlyle has seen in that very lapse a rise into transcendental faith of the highest order. Neither of them has neglected, but, on the contrary, both keenly appreciated Sterling's literary labors and merits; and both would concur in pointing him out as a type of that new creation of thinkers and supposed philosophers in whom doubt and trust are ever contending for the mastery—who are ever seeking, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth—a mongrel breed, sprung from an unnatural union between scepticism and Christianity.

John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, in the Isle of Bute, on the 20th of July, 1806. His father rented a small farm attached to the Castle, and the first four years of Johnny's life were spent on a wild-wooded, rocky coast, among headlands, storms, and thundering breakers. Nature gave him a good schooling; for, when he left the Isle of Bute, it was for the well-grassed, many-brooked village of Llanblethian, in the Vale of Glamorgan. Five years more passed in that pleasant spot, and time never effaced the lovely images it imprinted on Sterling's mind. Every line and hue, he said, were more deeply and accurately fixed in his memory than those of any scene he had since beheld. Beautifully and with deep feeling did he retrace the impressions they made on his childish fancy, in an article written in the Literary Chronicle in his twenty-second year. He had not seen the spot since he was eight years old, yet he described the old ruin of St. Quentin's Castle, the orchard of his home, the school where he used to read the well-thumbed History of Greece by Oliver Goldsmith, and the garden-sports of himself and his playmates, with as much distinctness as if they had been souvenirs of the previous spring. Very precious are such recollections, for one personal experience is worth a hundred facts learnt from books.

When Napoleon returned from Elba, in 1815, little Sterling was in the midst of French school-boys, at Passy, shouting, Vive l'Empereur. His father had become a writer in the Times, under the name of Vetus, and was in hopes of being appointed one of its foreign correspondents. The Hundred Days which convulsed Europe drove the Sterlings from France; and fortune, who tries literary aspirants with her ficklest moods, shifted the father from Russell Square and Queen Square, to Blackfriars Road and the Grove, at Blackheath. At last he rode at anchor, and was permanently connected with the Times. John was sent to Dr. Burney's school, at Greenwich, and afterward came under the tuition of Dr. Waite, at Blackheath, and of Dr. Trollope, the master of Christ's Hospital. He was twelve years old when his younger brother, Edward, died. It was an early age to become familiar with death. John felt the loss as if he had been a Catholic. God or nature, one knows not which, taught him the communion of saints. "Edward is near me now," he used to say to himself. "Edward is watching me. He knows what I am doing and thinking. He is sad for my faults. I must, I will strive to do what he would approve." Very active was his mind at this period. His keen eye observed everything; his soul was winged. He read the entire Edinburgh Review through, from the beginning, and cart-loads of books from circulating libraries, "wading," as Carlyle says, "like Ulysses toward his palace, through infinite dung." No advantages of education were denied him. At the University of Glasgow he was tutored by Mr. Jacobson, since Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Bishop of Chester; and in 1824, when he was in his nineteenth year, he removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where another man of eminence, Julius, afterward Archdeacon Hare, became his tutor and his lasting friend. He was in all respects worthy of such friendship. A youth who, with a delicate frame, could stand waist-deep in the river, to aid in passing buckets to and fro, when the buildings of King's Court were on fire, must have had a singular disregard of self, and readiness for all moral enterprise. "Somebody must be in it," he said, when his tutor remonstrated with him. "Why not I, as well as another?" Friendships were the best gift Sterling received from Cambridge. The classical knowledge he acquired there was not very exact, nor did he submit to any strict discipline. In the Union he was "the master-bowman," and out of such comrades as Charles Buller, Richard Milnes, John Kemble, Richard Trench, and Frederic Maurice, he made of the two last dear and intimate friends. He and Frederic Maurice, indeed, married two sisters; and to him and Coleridge he owed chiefly the formation of his opinions and character. The latter was at that time beginning to found a school of thought, and the former, Frederic Maurice, is now, and has long been, a recognized leader of the Broad Church party, in the Anglican communion.

If ever there was a moonstruck prophet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one. As a poet, he was a star; as a divine, an ignis fatuus. He subjected faith to reason, coquetted with infidelity, embraced Germanism, and discoursed by the hour on the church and the Logos in language all musical and shining, but conveying no meaning whatever to any one of his hearers. [Footnote 228]

[Footnote 228: Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 73.]

Your reason (Vernunft) bound you to accept a multitude of facts and principles which your understanding (Verstand) rejected. With a good understanding only you might be an unbeliever, but reason would exalt you into a Christian. Everything depended on this distinction, and if you could not comprehend it, (which nobody could,) so much the worse for you. Yet English society was fast being ensnared by such theosophic nonsense and hazy "Kantean transcendentalism." The clear dogmas of traditional faith and the simplicity of Scripture, likewise, were being observed in a cloud of jargon. Dr. Pusey in his youth was sliding into German subtleties; Isaac Taylor was watering Christianity down into human philosophy; Dr. Arnold was pleading for an Erastian church comprising all sects and denominations; Dr. Hampden's terminology was effacing the time-hallowed language of the schools; Coleridge, with his drunken imagination, and Milman, with his rationalistic solution of Scripture miracles, were paving the way for Strauss and Renan; and if it had not been for the Oxford revival of primitive tradition and patristic lore, the English mind would have wandered away into the bleak desert of infidelity without one oasis—one guiding path by which to return to the fresh pasture of truth and peace.

Sterling, unfortunately, was not brought under this happier influence. The seed sown in him by Coleridge and his compeers produced, as we shall see, its natural fruit, and made him a forerunner of that worship of humanity which is now to so large an extent superseding the worship of Christ. After spending a year in Trinity College, Cambridge, he migrated to Trinity Hall, and in 1827, quitted the university altogether. He had to seek a profession, and knew not what to choose. He tried a private secretaryship, and ended, of course, with literature—the profession of all clever men who have none. For that, and especially for periodical literature, he was best fitted, for his thoughts were quick and brilliant, "beautifullest sheet-lightning not to be condensed into thunderbolts," deriving their momentum from swift strokes, not from metallic weight.

The copyright of the Athenaeum being for sale, Sterling and his gifted friends thought it would make a fine opening for them. He wrote much in it in the years 1828 and 1829, together with Maurice, who was editor. His "Shades of the Dead," "Alexander the Great," "Joan of Arc," "Wycliffe," "Columbus," "Gustavus Adolphus," "Milton," and "Burns," are full of thought, color, and enthusiasm, but they produce a saddening effect. They are "a beautiful mirage in the dry wilderness; but you cannot quench your thirst there!" Sterling knew not the stand-point from which alone the characters of past times can be duly appreciated. He describes Joan of Arc as "perhaps the most wonderful, exquisite, and complete personage in all the history of the world," yet he maintains that "her persuasion of the outward appearance of divine agency was caused by a diseased excitability of the fancy." As if to hear a voice from heaven "to assist her in governing herself," to see an angel, and receive visits from the departed, implied of necessity a diseased imagination! He sees in Wycliffe a Gospel hero almost as full of "immortal wisdom" as Coleridge, his "Christian Plato," He couples him with Erigena, who "questioned transubstantiation—the master-sorcery," and Berengarius, who "opposed the same monstrous doctrine." But he tells us in praise of these new lights, what may well be regarded as dispraise, that "they encouraged themselves to cast away the belief of all that Luther afterward rejected by the simple study of the Bible, unaided by general knowledge, and without the guidance of sufficient interpreters." Such is the fatal admission of one of whom his friend and biographer, Archdeacon Hare, writes that "the most striking and precious quality in his writings is the deep sympathy with the errors and faults, and even with the sins, of mankind." Here, then, is another admission—an admission, not of the disciple, but of the master, that while Sterling combated that Catholic religion which is from first to last the worship of Christ, he was already exhibiting the most decided symptom of Positivism, or the worship of Humanity. He dwells, again, with delight on the goodness and greatness of Columbus; he assures us that he was a diligent student of the Bible, had a childlike simplicity of faith in the truths of religion; was, in his own belief, the chosen minister of providence, watched over by saints and angels, pointed in his path across the waters by the mother of the Lord, and holding in his hand the cross as the only ensign of triumph; and yet, with strange perversity, he comes to the conclusion that the mind of this fearless discoverer was "in many respects dark and weak," and that his faith, though nobler than that of the multitude around him, was "not the purest Christianity." Sterling himself, in short, held a purer creed, (if he could only have defined it,) and we shall see presently to what it led.

When his mind first came into Coleridge's plastic hands, it was simply chaotic as regards religion. Instructed by the oracle of Highgate, he engrafted a belief in Christianity, such as it was, on his original "piety of heart," (as Carlyle calls it,) and his "religion, which was as good as altogether ethnic." In this new phase of mental hallucination, his sceptical zeal against what he deemed superstition abated, and his radicalism, toning down, lost some of its wildest features. In this frame he wrote and published a novel called Arthur Coningsby. It was then his only book, and it brought him little satisfaction. The babe was still-born, and had it lived, the father, as it seems, would have had little love for his own offspring. Coleridge's moonshine glittered on his pages, but its outlooks into futurity were confused and sad. It was "gilded vacuity," opulent misery. The hero is himself—a youth plunging into life without any fixed principle to guide him; full of democratic, utilitarian, and heathenish theories; he suffers shipwreck—the shipwreck of the mind; and then by the hand of some semi-Christian quack, like dreamy Coleridge, is guided into a port which is no harbor, and a church where there is no anchorage. Such was Arthur Coningsby. But to Carlyle Sterling never mentioned the name of the novel, nor would hear it spoken of in his presence.

During the years in which it was planned, written, and published, from 1829 to 1832, Sterling wooed and won Susannah Barton, a kindly and true-hearted wife, to share his pleasures and trials; made an intimate friend of General Torrijos, a Spanish exile; and was silly enough to aid him and a little band of democrats (including an Irishman named Boyd, who had more money than wits) to purchase a ship in the Thames, arms and stores, for the purpose of invading Spain and proclaiming a republic! Sterling himself was to have taken part in the mad expedition; but Cupid, as usual, was stronger than Mars; and Susannah, who was not yet Mrs. Sterling, prevailed on her lover to lay his armor aside. Of course, the Spanish envoy got tidings of the plot; and the ship, with its crew and cargo, was seized in the king's name when dropping down the river. Coleridge's moonshine, it seems, was not strong enough yet to dispel the dark frowns of democracy.

In 1830, the marriage contract was sealed; but alas! in this fallen world the glad moment of our realized hopes is almost always dashed with some strange and unexpected sorrow. Sterling's health failed, and his lungs, menaced by consumption, asked for a warmer climate. The year 1831 found him in the island of St. Vincent in the midst of tropic vegetation, tornadoes, and slaves as yet unworthy of freedom. One hurricane, fiercer than its fellows, stripped the roof from the house where Sterling lived, and whirled about the cottages of the negroes as if they had been chaff. Meanwhile, in December, 1831, Torrijos, the deluded democrat general, reaches Spain, runs ashore at Fuengirola with fifty-five desperadoes like himself, seizes a farm, barricades it, is surrounded, surrenders, is haled with his comrades to Malaga, and with them all, the rich Irishman included, is swiftly fusiladed. "I hear the sound of that musketry," wrote Sterling; "it is as if the bullets were tearing my own brain." No wonder, for to his brain the folly of a wild enterprise was mainly due.

Repentance came; religion was his study; and prayer, earnest prayer for guidance, arose from his lips as he sat under the dates and palms, and gazed on the mirror of summer seas. Such prayer had been answered more fully if teachers such as Coleridge, with his gift of words, and Edward Irving, with his gift of tongues, had not already imbued him with a multitude of truths which were half untruths, and untruths which were half truths. He believed himself to be "in possession of the blessings of Christ's redemption;" and though he scarcely as yet knew the elements of Christianity, he began to think of teaching it. It is always the way with pious Protestant youths. They have vocations to preach before they are schooled; and what ought to be taken for presumption is hailed by their friends as the most signal proof of grace. So Sterling, wearied of West India life, formed a vague scheme of anti-slavery philanthropy, and turned his face toward Europe and his thoughts toward the ministry of the Established Church.

It was in June, 1833, and on the banks of the Rhine, that the unripe aspirant for holy orders met his old friend and tutor, the Rev. Julius Hare. That worthy gentleman encouraged a desire he should rather have checked, and Sterling was not long in arriving at a determination to become Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, and wear, at least, the surplice and stole, though he had no hood or academical degree to adorn himself withal. So on Trinity Sunday of the following year, he came out of Chichester Cathedral a raw deacon, and established himself with his family in a modest mansion in a quiet, leafy lane of Hurstmonceaux. Very diligent was Sterling in his pastoral duties; but the fervor of his zeal soon cooled. In September he began to have misgivings, and in February following he had quitted the path he had prematurely chosen. The reason assigned was loss of health; but Carlyle guessed shrewdly, and with too much truth, that Sterling was disappointed even to despair by the church whose garment he had spasmodically caught by the hem. The virtue he expected did not go forth from it, and the glimmer of truth which reached him came through a dense cloud of confused writings. The very names of these betokened chaos, and the twilight that struggled through them was sufficient neither to cheer nor to guide. Many pages of Archdeacon Hare's memoir are filled with extracts from Sterling's letters, and accounts of his favorite studies at this period. They form a labyrinth none can thread, where he wanders to and fro without landmarks, bourn, light, or hope. The more he reads the Old Testament, the less can he believe in its miracles; and having no guide who speaks with authority, he applies for satisfaction in vain to one charlatan after another as confused, fanciful, and blind as himself. Fancy a system of theology taught by Tholuck, Schiller, and Olshausen; by Schleiermacher, Mackintosh, and Milman, by the Koran and Kant, by Jonathan Edwards, Coleridge, and Maurice! Such were Sterling's instructors, and it is not to be wondered at that they created more doubts than they removed, and that under their influence he discarded all faith in a hierarchy, a church, and a Bible written by plenary inspiration. Christianity, he thought, could only become true by changing with the times; and if any existing society or church was to be the nucleus of a new system, it could only be by the sloughing off of much that was old. How utterly deplorable would be the condition of the human race if left to the teaching of such philosophers and divines. After two thousand years of Christian schooling, it would know nothing more than ancient Greece and Rome of God and of its own destinies. All revelation must be doubted of anew in order that anything may be believed, and the improved Christianity to be given in these last days to the world would owe all its changes and improvements to men as feeble and fallible as ourselves. Better, far better, had it been for you, John Sterling, to be instructed by a simple parish priest bred among the mountains, and ministering in that church which is the pillar and ground of the truth, than be handed over as you were by Coleridge, Maurice, and Hare, to Strauss, Mill, and Carlyle—from unbelief in the bud to unbelief in full, gaudy, flaunting blossom.

We cannot discover anything imposing in Sterling's talents. Even in secular learning he was a reed shaken by the wind. His essays and poems want definite view and bold outline. It is a grand thing to see both sides of a question, but it is a pitiful thing to say as much for one side as for another. The want of first principles makes all Sterling's pages dreamy and pointless. He has no point to steer from, no harbor to steer to; he is always toiling against wind and tide, making no way, and accounting it triumphant success only not to be shipwrecked. Had he confined his criticisms to matters of taste, he might have been endured, but he will be piercing the clouds without any ballast to steady or rudder to guide his balloon.

In February, 1835, Sterling first became personally acquainted with that extraordinary writer, Thomas Carlyle. He met him in his natural element, the society of brilliant free-thinkers. He was side by side with John Stuart Mill at the India House, and then at Sterling's father's with the Crawfords and other literati, with whom unbelief was wisdom. His writings, and particularly Sartor Resartus, made a great impression on Sterling, though he saw the strange and extravagant defects of its style, and labored hard to convince the author of his own belief in a "personal God." But the poison did its work. The strong inward unrest, the Titanic heaving of Teufelsdröckh's spirit communicated itself to Sterling's, and whirled it away still further from central peace. Carlyle could only stimulate the intellect, and fill it with exuberant images. He had heard without regret of Sterling's abandonment of democracy, and he saw with greater satisfaction his defection from parochial work. He regarded the pen as his vocation, and the greatest instrument for good in the world. Not that Sterling broke outwardly with the church, or declared himself a renegade. On the contrary, he now and then performed service for a friend at Bayswater, but it became more and more evident that his faith in Christianity was partial and unsound. His mind was not in the highest degree devotional, nor had he that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.

His knowledge of German writers hitherto was confined to semi-sceptics and self-appointed evangelists, Neander and the like. Carlyle introduced him to higher souls, if literary merit constitutes height. He brought him to the feet of Goethe, Richter, Schiller, and Lessing, and with these he tried to satisfy the void which an imperfect religion had been unable to fill. Mr. Dunn, an amiable Irish clergyman, became one of their chosen circle, and we learn from Sterling himself that his theology was compounded of the Greek fathers, mystics and ethical philosophers, and that its main defect was an insufficient apprehension of the reality and depth of sin. The very word sin is considered objectionable in the school of Carlyle and Mill, because it, is the correlative of grace. Sterling's friends seemed fated to be the enemies of his soul. He had another named Edgeworth, a nephew of Miss Edgeworth the novelist. He was well read in Plato and Kant, yet even less of a believer than they. "He entertained not creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean ghosts of creeds." So says Carlyle, of whom Sterling bears witness, that "his fundamental position is the good of evil, and the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow."

Deplorable health again, in 1836, drove Sterling to a sunnier clime. He was always dodging and jerking about "to escape the scythe of Death." At Bordeaux his feeble frame revived, and he delved in the mines of literature for fine gold. The theological fever in his mind had abated. Such is Carlyle's account—and the health of pure reason returned, or almost returned. He had done with theology, rubrics, church articles, and "the enormous ever-repeated thrashing of the straw." But did he find the grain? If theology is chaff, where shall we look for wheat? Will the heart of mankind accept literature as the summum bonum, the guide of life, the antidote of sin, sorrow, and death? Yet for it Carlyle and Sterling bid farewell to Christianity, and cry: "Adieu, ye threshing-floors of rotten straw, with bleared tallow-light for sun; to you adieu!" The Sexton's Daughter was a poem which indicated Sterling's gradual renunciation of those fragments of Christianity which still clung to him. He even began to think of attacking revelation, on the principle of folly rushing in where angels fear to tread. The Christian religion, he believed, would be really indebted to him for meddling with its foundations, and he should be "doing good to theology," by writing what would for ever exclude him from ministering even in the Church of England. His letters at this period are full of distressing jumble, which Archdeacon Hare records as Christian with a certain unction, and Carlyle, more sagacious, claims as antichristian with a chuckle of delight.

A sickly shadow of the parish church still hung over Sterling's compositions, according to the latter biographer, and he gives an amusing description of the parson-like way in which his friend read aloud the Sexton's Daughter at Blackheath, and gave painful effect to its maudlin morality. It was "a dreary pulpit, or even conventicle manner; that flattest moaning hoo-hoo of predetermined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter introduced by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow of the other, and the dull swing of the rocking-horse, duly in each."

The invalid poet had returned from Bordeaux, but he did not remain long at Blackheath. Again he crossed the waters in cheerful quest of balmier air, and the manifold bliss of health. Daily he rode among the rocky slopes and redundant foliage of Madeira, writing to Carlyle often for recreation, and reading Goethe's Life and Works with fear and delight. He called him "the most splendid of anachronisms," and spoke of his life as "thoroughly, nay, intensely pagan, in an age when it is men's duty to be Christian. In truth," he adds, "I am afraid of him, I enjoy and admire him so much, and feel I could so easily be tempted to go along with him." Thus all things conduced to lead Sterling's mind down the steep. Lyell's Geology opened a new flutter (not line) of thought, and bewildered him with the view it presented of "the abysmal extent of time."

From Professor Wilson, alias Christopher North, the presiding spirit of Blackwood, Sterling received great encouragement—perhaps more than he deserved. But ingenious madness is all that the public requires in the magazines of some countries. Laudari a Laudato is always a rare delight. Had Carlyle been editor, his criticisms on Sterling's Tales and Poems would have been more severe, yea, and more just than Wilson's—he of the Isle of Palms. Thus he says of The Onyx Ring: "There wants maturing, wants purifying of clear from unclear; properly there wants patience and steady depth. The basis is wild and loose; and in the details, lucent often with fine color, and dipt in beautiful sunshine, there are several things misseen, untrue, which is the worst species of mispainting." This it was that blurred and marred all poor Sterling's productions; everything was misseen, and therefore mispainted. In one particular he was to be praised and envied—he saw things on the sunny side. In spite of sickness, he was cheerful, and buoyancy of spirit kept him afloat on a sea where many would have sunk. John Stuart Mill was now editing The London and Westminster Review, and Sterling was sufficiently vague and unsound to be thought a valuable contributor. In that Review he discoursed of Montaigne, Simonides, and Carlyle, while in the Quarterly of 1842, he criticised Tennyson. Of these critiques the best is that on Simonides, for the subject was best fitted to Sterling's taste and powers. He was a better judge of Greek poetry and Greek character than of writers like Montaigne, Carlyle, and Tennyson, who have lived in Christian times, and must be judged by Christian rules. He could hardly wander wide of his theme while dealing with the bright wine, luscious fruit, honey, and crystal founts of Ceos, while gathering up the costly fragments of its gifted bard, and rendering in English the chaste and delicately chiselled verses of him who has "not left a single line inspired by love."

But the case was altered when Sterling tried to appreciate Montaigne, The task was above him. He was neither a believer nor an unbeliever, but partly both. He could neither wholly praise nor wholly blame Montaigne's scepticism. He had an instinctive leaning toward the writer who adopted Que sçay-je? as his motto, and followed the natural religion of Sébonde. He honored one whose writings were condemned at Rome, and thought, for that very reason, they must have some good in them. He admired an essayist who sat loose to the received opinions and belief of his time, chose Plutarch for his favorite author, (as Rousseau and Madame Roland did after him,) and "of all men seemed most thoroughly to have revered and loved the saint, prophet, and martyr of pagan wisdom, Socrates."

Perhaps Socrates would not be in such good odor with the sceptics of our day, if he too had not been in some sense an unbeliever. Perhaps it is in his protesting character that they chiefly admire him, and trace in him some resemblance to the sage of Wittemburg. They admire him, and set him up as a model, because he was a witness against the established and popular religion of his country. Yet it may be that Socrates had really more faith than they have, and with all the disadvantages of paganism, made, if we may so speak, a better deist than nineteenth-century sceptics. Perhaps his mind was clearer, after all, than Montaigne's, or than Sterling's, who wrote of Montaigne that, "in the bewilderment of his misunderstanding at the immensity and seeming contradictions of the universe, perhaps he even hoped that one day or other the puzzle of existence would find its solution in the accompanying puzzle of revelation."

We have not time, in this place, to follow Sterling's review of his friend Carlyle's works. Suffice it to say, what we believe to be the fact, that he discovered Carlyle's intellectual stature to be high because the literary world had already recognized it as such; but he did not discover the extent of Tennyson's powers because the literary world had not yet recognized them. This is not very complimentary to Sterling's critiques or penetration—but dreamy and indistinct beauty is all that he ever reaches, and his exposé of Carlyle's philosophy is as hazy and unsatisfactory as his appreciation of Tennyson is hesitating and imperfect.

After founding the Sterling Club, our hero once more turned his face toward the sweet south. In company with his friend. Dr. Calvert, he crossed the Alps, and wandered from city to city through the garden of Europe, till he reached, in the winter of 1838-9, the city without a rival. Perhaps Sterling was apt to let other people reflect for him. If he had set his own thoughts originally to work, he could hardly have failed to detect in the metropolis of Christendom something more than he pretended to find. A philosophic mind, even of a minor order, could not allow itself to dwell on Rome, the Holy See, and the pontifical line, without finding in them matter for the greatest consideration and most searching inquiry. Whence the mighty, the enduring influence of these on mankind and mankind's history, if there lie not at their root, principles which escape the glance of superficial observers? Whether divine, human, or diabolical, they must deserve philosophical research, were it only for the magnitude of their results. Yet Sterling is bold enough to affirm that "one loses all tendency to idealize the metropolis and system of the hierarchy into anything higher than a piece of showy stage-declamation, at bottom thoroughly mean and prosaic." Again he tells us that "The modern Rome, pope and all inclusive, are a shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old commonwealth." So warped was his judgment that St. Peter's itself found little favor in his eyes. His artistic notes are as unsound as his religious ones. Prejudice jaundiced all. "I have seen the pope," he says, "in all his pomp at St. Peter's; and he looked to me a mere lie in livery." But to him perhaps St. Peter on his cross would not have appeared truth in undress. He derived, it is to be feared, little good from his visit to the tombs of the apostles. To him they were tombs indeed—vaults, charnel-houses, painted sepulchres. Mrs. Sterling's premature confinement recalled him to England, and in the summer of 1839 he was housed at Clifton, and enjoying the noxious friendship of an amiable deist, Mr. Frank Newman, brother of the great convert to Catholicism of the same name. He, too, had once professed Anglican Christianity, but he resigned his fellowship at Oxford, and openly combated the divinity of the Holy Ghost.

At Clifton Sterling became familiar with Strauss; we do not mean Strauss in person, but in his still more dangerous Life of Christ. Here was, indeed, a "lie in livery," yet Sterling pronounced it "exceedingly clever and clear-headed, with more of insight, and less of destructive rage than he expected." It would work, he said, deep and far, and it was well for partisans on one side and the other to have a book of which they could say, "This is our Creed and Code—or, rather, Anti-Creed and Anti-Code." Alas! John Sterling, are you come to this? The "lie in livery" whom you saw in Rome would have taught you better. He bid you adore him whom Strauss denies, and hold fast to him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

There is little to be said of Sterling's poetry, and that little such as his ghost might not like to hear. It never caught the public ear, and if it had caught, could not have charmed it. He had not the slightest taste for music, nor any tune in him. His verses were merely rhymed, and barely rhythmical speeches, not songs. "The thoughts were not much above the sound, and the latter was as unmusical as a drum. Carlyle strongly advised him to stick to prose, and declared that his "poetry" had "a monstrous rub-a-dub, instead of a tune." Whether in prose or verse, haze, insufficiency, and failure marked all he attempted. At Falmouth, as at Clifton, he moved in a luminous atmosphere of intellects gone astray. While there he published The Election, a poem in eleven books, which describes in heroic verse the contest between Frank Vane and Peter Mogg for an English borough. There were graceful touches here and there; but the pages wanted that originality which is the only passport to permanent success. The Election was followed by Strafford and Coeur de Lion, but the one subject was too dramatic, and the other one too epic, for Sterling's muse.

In 1842, he was listening to rhapsodists reciting Ariosto on the mole at Naples, or boating round the promontory of Sorrento. His spoiled and purposeless existence was drawing near its close. A painful sense of its uselessness forced itself frequently on his mind. His life, he wrote, had ceased to be a chain, and fell into a heap of broken links. Versatility in his father became irresolution in him. That father, Edward Sterling, possessed an improvising faculty without parallel, and had a fair field for its display in the pages of the Times. There, conjurer-like, he set forth "three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject." There, day after day, he hit the essential animus of the great Babylon with extraordinary precision. There he performed to admiration his marvellous somersaults, not only without shame, but with the ease and daring of one who is always right. There he appeared as Whig or Tory, Peelite or Anti-Peelite, not as the whim took him, but as it took the blatant public for whom he wrote. There "Captain Whirlwind," as Carlyle used to call him, let loose his winds, and, securely anonymous, looked forth from his cave on the seething seas and thundering surges which he rolled on the shore. The son could not but reflect in a degree the father's face. Hence, in John Sterling we find, to his misfortune, great and habitual uncertainty. "Christianity," he wrote, not long before his death, "is a great comfort and blessing to me, although I am quite unable to believe all its original documents." What kind of Christianity was this which comforted him, and whence did it derive its evidences? The same inconsistency and vagueness appears in his remark—and it was one of his latest—that he had gained but little good from what he had heard or read of theology, but derived the greatest comfort from the words, "Thy will be done." As if these words did not involve the whole circle of theology, as the egg contains the chicken, and the acorn the oak.

In the beginning of 1843, Sterling broke a blood-vessel; his mother also became seriously ill; and his father's mansion at Knightsbridge, "built on the high table-land of sunshine and success," was filled at once with bitterness and gloom. Very affectionate and pious were Sterling's letters to his mother; nor can it be said that death came to either of them unawares. They saw the grim shadow approach, and awaited his stroke with such fortitude as their sense of religion gave them. "Dear mother," wrote Sterling, "there is surely something uniting us that cannot perish, I seem so sure of a love which shall last and reunite us, that even the remembrance, painful as that is, of all my own follies and ill tempers cannot shake this faith. When I think of you, and know how you feel toward me, and have felt for every moment of almost forty years, it would be too dark to believe that we shall never meet again."

On Good Friday, 1843, Sterling's wife had borne him another child, and, with her infant, was doing well. The post arrived on the Tuesday following, and Sterling left her for a moment to read the tidings brought of his mother. He returned soon with a forced calm on his face, but to announce his mother's death. Alas! another bereavement, still more desolating, was at hand. In two hours more his beloved wife also was numbered with the dead. His two best friends were cut down by a single blow; to him they died in one day—almost in one hour. A mother's love is unique: there is nothing like it in the world; a wife's love is all that imagination can picture of earthly affection; and to Sterling they were now both things of the past. Alone, alone he must pursue his pilgrimage, haunted by the perpetual remembrance of joys never to return. "My children," he cried, "require me tenfold now. What I shall do, is all confusion and darkness."

It is in such seasons of bereavement especially that the Catholic realizes his church as the mourner's solace and the outcast's home. But Sterling, unhappily, was debarred from this best and sweetest consolation. Friends he had in abundance, but they were almost all errant meteors like himself, and stars shining in mist. By the death of his mother he became rich, when riches could no longer purchase increase of joy. He took a house at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, and there strove to live for his children and in a sphere of poetry. But his lyre had few listeners; and it would be but loss of time to criticise at length what is now forgotten. Now and then he went up to town, and even entertained friends in his father's desolate dwelling at Knightsbridge. It was like "dining in a ruin in the crypt of a mausoleum." His silent sadness was manifest to all through the bright mask he sometimes wore. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," he wrote from Ventnor to Mr. Frank Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness, but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of my life." That life was fast ebbing away, and he knew it; he was drifting into the vast ocean of eternity, and he watched without regret the receding shore. A certain piety sustained him. "God is great," he would exclaim with Moslem fervor, "God is great." His heart yearned especially toward Carlyle, and the Maurices were constantly at his side. Infidelity and semi-Christianity, in death as in life, were his presiding genii. He clasped the Bible in his feeble hand, though he believed it but in part. He prayed to be forgiven; he thanked the all-wise One; but it was long since he had begun "to deem himself the opponent, the antagonist of everything that is," and antagonism is a frame of mind little conducive to peace and joy. A few days before his death he wrote to Carlyle: "I tread the common road into the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have none. ... Toward me it is more true than toward England, that no man has been and done like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a hand when THERE, that will not be wanting." To this same friend, four days before his death, he addressed some stanzas which Carlyle has not published, but says they were written as if in starfire and immortal tears." His eyes were closed on this world on the 18th of September, 1844. He sleeps in the burying-ground of Bonchurch, and is embalmed in the memory of his friends.

His natural virtues were of the highest order; his life was correct, his temper uncomplaining, his soul transparent, and his imagination lively. Standing, as he did, midway between belief and unbelief, he conciliated the esteem and friendship of believers and unbelievers, if Archdeacon Hare and Mr. Maurice are to be reckoned among the former. The archdeacon, indeed, goes far in the excuses he makes for Sterling, saying, "Such men we honor, although they fall; nay, we honor them the more because they fall;" a sentiment so extravagant that the most liberal Catholic will condemn it without hesitation.

Every life has its moral; and that of Sterling's is certainly no exception to the rule. He is a type of educated England in the present day—half-Christian, half-infidel. Nature and cultivation had given him all that was requisite to make him a useful member of society, and to cheer his dying hours with the retrospect of an existence applied to the happiest and highest ends. But one thing was wanting in him, a steady purpose and a clear view of the means by which it was to be obtained. If he had been fortunate enough to know, enjoy, and exemplify the Catholic religion, it would have supplied him with a definite scope, and have laid down a rule of faith and obedience by which to compass his ends; it would have collected all his scattered forces, given edge to his arguments, sober color to his imagination, satisfaction to his yearnings, rest to his disquiet, comfort to his sadness. It would have enabled him to realize with all the certitude of faith facts which by the light of nature he could not credit, and truths which he could not comprehend. It would have taught him with authority things which his teachers propounded in doubt, asserted feebly, or distinctly denied. It would have saved him from a wasted existence, from the shallow theology of Archdeacon Hare and his "Guesses at Truth," from the puzzle-headed metaphysics of Coleridge, the wild utterances of Edward Irving, the Arian tendencies of Maurice and Dean Stanley, the supercilious incredulity of Carlyle, the proud unbelief of Francis Newman, and the efforts, intentional or unintentional, of them all to bring about an unnatural and odious alliance between infidelity and Christian faith. They have labored hard to establish a school, and in England the results of their toil is unhappily everywhere apparent. Unbelief is wearing a Christian mask; and often has the language of Christ on its lips. Ministers of religion scatter doubts in evangelical terms, and scoffers mimic the tones and language of honest disciples. Atheists and Deists do homage to the son of Mary, and speak respectfully of saints, doctors, and popes. Protestant divines apologize for sincere unbelievers, and quote with approval the writings of the apostles of doubt. Conciliation and compromise are loudly called for on both sides, and hatred of all law and dogma is extolled as charitable and wise. The proposal of marriage between Christianity and Infidelity is openly published; and the Catholic Church alone solemnly and persistently forbids the banns.

Saint Columba.

Columba, gentlest of all names! Bequest
Of a strong Celtic mother to a child
Who, unto life's meridian, kept the wild,
Impassioned grandeur of his race; his guest
The patriot bard; while innocence oppressed
Flew, with the instinct of souls undefiled,
To his great heart, who, to the guileless mild.
Called heaven's swift curse upon the lifted crest
Of lawless power. And still the generous mind
Pores, kindling, o'er heroic legends quaint,
In which grave history dips her brush to paint
That nature fierce and tender; but combined
With grace celestial, till the man we find
Crowned with th' eternal glories of the saint.

Gheel.
A Colony Of The Insane,
Living In Families And At Liberty.

The Belgian Kempen Land is a vast stretch of sandy plains in the provinces of Anvers, Brabant, and Limburg. Its chief parish, Gheel, has a population of some 12,000, about one fifteenth of which are lunatics in family treatment, and many of them occupied in the usual routine of domestic, field, and garden work. This custom has prevailed there for a thousand years. In the seventh century, a chapel was built and dedicated to Saint Martin, the apostle of the Gauls. Some cells of pious hermits surrounded it and formed the principal nucleus of Gheel. Here the young daughter of a pagan king of Ireland sought a refuge from his incestuous love, accompanied by Gerrebert, the priest who had converted herself and her mother to Christianity. Her father, discovering her traces, pursued her, caused Gerrebert to be put to death, and his servants refusing to execute his sanguinary orders against his daughter, he cut off her head with his own hands, thus avenging, by the most horrible crime, the defeat of his guilty passion. Certain lunatics who witnessed this terrible martyrdom, and others whom piety led to the grave of the victims, as the legend runs, were cured. Gratitude and faith attributed the merit of these cures to the holy young virgin, henceforth honored as the patroness of the insane. Attracted by hopes of a miracle, other families brought their afflicted to the foot of the memorial cross and double bier. The visitors, on their departure, confided their patients to the charity of the residents. This custom became an institution. Little by little, a village was formed here, animated by work as well as prayer, and which became, at last, an important burgh. A large and beautiful church, built in honor of Saint Dymphna, replaced Saint Martin's chapel, early in the twelfth century, and was consecrated on its completion in 1340, by the Bishop of Cambrai. The popular devotion there was approved by a brief of Pope Eugene IV., in 1400. A vicariate composed of nine priests and a director was instituted in 1538, and in 1562 changed into a chapter consisting of nine canons and a deacon.

From these times up to our own day, a current of pilgrimage has been sustained by the malady and by faith.

This fountain of prayer in the desert, these pious cares solicited and granted, have become a source of industry and liberty for the insane, and of prosperity for the district. This is readily explained. The barren soil of the Kempen renders it difficult to live there, hospitality was more onerous there than elsewhere, and economy as well as religious charity counselled the host to have but one board with his guest. To keep him apart would have been losing the time of those occupied in taking care of him. Left at liberty, he would naturally accompany them to the fields, and there, before the soil which solicited arms, another step of progress was accomplished. So, without any constraint, by the attractions of social labor and of gentle influences, many of the insane became useful members of the family. The first inspirations of religion, reenforced by considerations of economy, came to be organized in a secular practice of humble virtues by the habit of affectionate cares. Thus, in the rude middle ages, the Gheel folk, without the light of science, but in that of a religious faith made fruitful by the heart and sustained by their interest, practised a treatment of insanity based on the liberty of movement, on rural and domestic industry, and on the sympathy of an adoptive family, far from all that might recall a sinister past.

The arbitrary discipline founded on geometrical and military ideas in modern times has not spared Gheel; yet, whatever abuses ten centuries had introduced and habit protected there, as well as its good services, were ascertained by a most thorough inquest. The new regulations for Gheel in 1851-'52-'57 and '58 secure, as far as written laws can go, the well-being of the insane.

The insane are admitted at Gheel without distinction as to nation, religion, age, sex, or fortune. Every one is welcomed with sincere sympathy, and receives the same hygienic and medical care, though nothing prevents the rich from enjoying their fortune, or whatever, in the way of luxuries, their relatives may provide for them. One English gentleman, for instance, consumes in festive entertainments the income of a large estate. Of late years, the Belgian administration has excluded from Gheel certain dangerous forms of lunacy, such as homicidal and incendiary monomanias, and those who are constantly bent upon escaping from any place to which they may have been taken, or whose affections are of such a nature as to disturb public decency. It does not appear, however, that this recent transfer of 250 patients had been called for by any disasters. It was rather a concession to administrative routine, and Mr. Parigot, the inspector at that time, regrets that the colony should thus have lost a class of patients the control of whom best attested its moral power. Both the patients and their guardians felt aggrieved by this arbitrary measure.

No distinctive dress is worn by the insane; their garments are such as are worn by the country folk in general, so that nothing calls public attention to them, nor reminds them of their peculiar situation.

Liberty under all its forms is the good genius which has inspired, protects, and preserves this colony: especially the liberty to come and go, to sleep or get up, to work or to rest, to read or write or talk at pleasure, to receive one's friends or correspond with them without any restriction. The supreme science of government consists in not contradicting the insane, but humoring their innocent fantasies, or imposing nothing by force, but obtaining all by persuasion. Unless some evident and particular inconvenience prevents it, they enter public places, smoke a pipe at the café, play a hand of cards, read the papers, or drink a glass of beer with the neighbors. The tavern-keepers are not allowed to sell wine or distilled liquors.

If liberty, equality, and fraternity are not political terms there, they are the realities of common life. The lunatic is a man, and is treated as such by the same right as all his brothers in God.

You would never hear at Gheel such a complaint as this, by a poor lunatic confined in an asylum, where, indeed, he was the subject of intelligent and devoted cares:

"They call us patients, to control and to oppress us, but they do not allow us the indulgence of sick folk! Often after a restless night, I would like to sleep in the morning. But no: the hour has come, the bell rings, we must rise whether we will or not. I am not, then, a patient any longer!"

At Gheel, no bell strikes the limit between sleep and waking. Pleasure, the example of activity, and appetite, are stimuli sufficient to counteract sluggishness. Sleep is never disturbed, unless by order of the physician on some particular occasion. Often, says Dr. Parigot, I have asked on entering, "Where is Mr.——?" The answer would be, "Doctor, our heerke is still abed; his breakfast is waiting him there by the fire;" and this at ten or eleven o'clock.

It may be asked whether the frequency of accidents and of escapes does not counterpoise the advantages of so much liberty.

No! accidents are neither common nor serious. Quarrels and spats are easily appeased; they occur very seldom, which is due, in part, to the tendency of the insane to keep apart rather than to associate with each other. This tendency is not contravened at Gheel, as at asylums, where the annoyance of forced association exasperates susceptible characters and irritable nervous systems.

"I am really mad, then, for them to condemn me to live with these people!" cried a monomaniac in despair. Enter almost any hall of an asylum where the insane assemble to warm themselves: you will be heart-struck by the sinister expression of this feeling in persons most of whom are as sensible as yourself to manias which are not their own, and whose punishment consists in finding themselves everywhere and always with the insane. These men and women are overwhelmed with ennui. The room in which they pass the night does not belong to them, and this warmed gallery, that yard, that garden, are for them but walled cages. You may read upon their faces the aggravation thus occasioned, while the chances of their cure diminish daily.

Now, turn to the lunatic at Gheel, who enjoys the free air, and feels a property in his chamber, in his books, his tools, his plants, his stones and various collections. He adorns his domicile after his own fashion; his inscriptions or designs appear upon the walls. He is busy in acting his dream; he roams in the woods and fields; he fishes in the streams, or spreads snares for birds, or labors at his will. Another writes all day in the sand of the streets the story of his thoughts— hieroglyphics to which he alone has the key. A third relieves his inward agitation by external movement; all day innocently busy, he returns tranquillized to his lodgings at night The rest are at work with their hosts, or at sport with the children, their friends and peers.

That melancholy which engenders the disgust of life, may often be calmed by a change so complete in one's whole existence, while the predisposition to it is not aggravated by the despair of incarceration. Dispersion in families distinct and often isolated, counteracts the danger of contagious imitation.

In the course of half a century, only two acts of personal violence are on record.

The enjoyment of their personal liberty sufficiently explains why so few try to escape from Gheel. Most of the patients have found there a deliverance from previous constraint; yet, to provide against all casualties, the administration, as soon as advised of the disappearance of a patient from his guardian's premises, sets in movement an effective police corps. Before this was instituted, the spontaneous intervention of the neighbors sufficed; for it was understood, for many leagues round, that any individual whose demeanor awakened suspicions of his sanity, should be conducted to Gheel as to his legal residence. The restorer of a runaway was also entitled to mileage for his trouble. When it is known that a certain lunatic is beset with the idea of escaping, which may take possession of the insane like any other, it is customary, after obtaining a permit therefor from the physician in charge, to fasten two rings or bracelets, covered with sheep-skin, upon the legs, with a covered chain, about a foot in length, connecting them. By this means the lunatic, without being confined, has his movements obstructed, while attention is directed to him. How preferable this is to the mortal ennui, to the sullen despair of confinement in an asylum! What matters it to the patient that his limbs are free, if before him is the barrier of bolts and bars—of massive doors, and impassable walls!

The morale of the insane cannot be otherwise than favorably affected by association with persons who protect him with solicitude, while they appeal to his good sense and good will, admitting him on a footing of equality to their hearths, their tables, and their work: such a welcome banishes from his mind the idea of humiliation and oppression, which everywhere else is connected with that of sequestration. Instead of being a pariah shaken off by society, he now belongs to humanity; his dignity as a man is safe, for it is respected in its chief privilege—liberty.

In the name of this liberty, he is trusted—he is constituted, in a measure, the arbiter of his own lot. If he do[es] not abuse it, supervision of him is relaxed. If his freedom be sometimes limited, the least remaining gleam of reason suffices to render him conscious that the restrictions imposed are not hostile in their spirit, but are simply precautions which he may disarm by a rational conduct.

Such sentiments sustain or awaken within him the life of the soul; they influence his manners and bearing. He does not lose the habit of society, and if he one day return home, it may be without shame or embarrassment; his absence will have been a journey, and not a humiliating sequestration.

Translated from political into psychologic language, liberty is spontaneity; and if we analyze it more profoundly, we find this term applicable to those actions only which employ the limbs, the senses, and the intellectual faculties as ministers of our inmost affections of will. For all spontaneous action, the head, the hands, and the heart are in union—the conflict between the spirit and the flesh is reconciled.

This supreme harmony implies the unison of man with himself, with his fellow-creatures, and with his spirit-fountain life. Express it as you will, its conception is the basis of the Christian therapeutics of insanity. All must be obtained of the lunatic by gentleness, and not by intimidation or violence; nothing ought to oppress the individuality of the patient. The mission of the guardians is to render inoffensive, amiable, and useful, a person imperfectly conscious of his acts. It is by one of the noblest powers of the spirit that they say to him virtually, Be free, and understand the sympathies that animate us. Alexander of Macedon accepted the beverage of his physician Philip before mentioning that Philip had been accused of intending to poison him. Now the insane are, in the immense majority of cases, no more guilty of ill intentions than the Acarnanian doctor, and our Alexanders of Belgium are poor peasants.

These Gheelois have faith in their providential mission, faith in the ancient miracles which have predestined their country to the cure of insanity, faith in their own power. Esquirol one day expressed to a peasant of this place his apprehensions about paroxysms of mania. The countryman laughed at his fears, and said: "You do not understand these folks; I am not strong, and yet the most furious of them is nothing for me." This is the way they all talk. The sentiment of an unlimited and privileged power is insinuated from childhood into the soul of the Gheelois by example and tradition. This power grows with his muscular force and experience; it imposes upon the insane, who feels himself feeble and disarmed before a master, and usually submits without resistance. Any desired help can be had, moreover, at a moment's warning, from the neighbors. The exigencies of family life with the insane invite the inhabitants of Gheel to respect their inoffensive fantasies, and to study in all its aspects the difficult art of directing their erring wills, of redressing their false ideas when they threaten mischief, of taking advantage of a lingering sentiment of sociality or a last gleam of reason, to secure themselves against violence and surprises. On the other hand, as they can have recourse to material constraint only in accidental cases, as they can reckon but exceptionally on the intelligent obedience of patients, it is especially by the evolution of sympathies, those quick rays of the soul which usually survive the intellect, and are often extinguished only with life, that the Gheelois have understood the tactics of social government. That women should excel in this diplomacy is not surprising. On them devolves the most delicate and important part of a system based on managing by gentleness the most whimsical characters. Simple, ignorant, laborious, without the vanities of fashionable life, but kind by nature, religious by education, and guided by her heart, the woman of Gheel accomplishes marvels of devotion and sagacity. By her cares, which no disgust repels, she is the visible Providence of the poor madman. By her ingenious expedients, she averts stormy crises, and never shows herself afraid. Without title or costume, she is a true sister of charity. To maintain her power over her fantastic subjects, she studies their intimate thoughts, observes their least gestures, divines their secret projects, and learns to read souls the most dissembling. To subdue the most savage, the young girl does not shrink from the manoeuvres of an innocent coquetry. At other times, it is the imperious magnetism of the look, of the attitude, of the voice, that lays its spell upon the spirit and dissipates fury. It is not rare to see maniacs of herculean frame obeying little women bowed and emaciated by age, and whose only arms are a few words spoken with authority. The husbands and fathers are not backward in these arts of management. Besides their innate turn for it, the peace of their household and their interests lead them to it. All idleness is a loss, and the boarder losing his time and making others lose theirs, if he remained a non-value, would soon become a burden. Compulsion to labor is out of the question. It is necessary to humor the lunatic, to entice him by rendering the work attractive. Is he restive? They are patient. Is he awkward? They make fun of his blunders without humiliating him; he will do better next time. As soon as he succeeds a little, he is flattered and encouraged; he soon comes to like the job. Gradually he is tamed and trained. Behold him, then, an active and a useful member of the family, proud of himself, a friend and child of the house, rising at the same hour as his companions and sharing their toils. Fallen as he may be from man's estate, does he not still afford greater capacities of sociability than those of wild beasts? To succeed in the education of the insane, the inhabitants of Gheel have displayed a persevering and intelligent energy, the power of which is enhanced by the natural sympathy of man for man. Much charity in the heart, gentleness upon the lips, friendly actions, reasoning even, at an opportune moment, exert a sovereign empire over characters whose susceptibility is exalted by disease. Patience is the first of virtues necessary in this community, and it has always risen to the height of the aberrations it has had to meet. No eccentricity provokes either surprise or anger. For twenty years Daniel Peter has been boarding with a Gheelois. This maniac covers the walls of his chamber with the most original caricatures; never does he mingle with the members of the family; he likes only one of the children, Joseph; but he loves him to the point of abdicating his own personality. He nicknames all around him, persons and beasts, even the matron, whom he calls the "tambour major." When she asks him through the door whether he wishes to eat, he replies: Joseph would like it; or else, Joseph will have none. The only way of getting anything from him is to compare him with some tall object, calling him a tree, a mast, a tower, etc. On Sunday only he will eat no meat, and takes flight at sight of a woman or of a horse. Notwithstanding all these whims, he is beloved by all the family, and remains inoffensive, because he is well treated. He returns to his lodgings regularly every evening after having wandered in the woods and over the heath. From this exchange of kind offices, which is the general tone, the most solid attachments spring. "You must have seen the afflicted family of der Phleger around the sick-bed of die Phlegling, you must have witnessed the touching scenes when the latter goes forth cured from the establishment, in order to get a clear idea of the means which constitute the basis of the treatment and the proper employment of which assure the success of the colony. These testimonies of gratitude and of mutual affection, these tears of happiness and of regret, these promises to see each other again, are the sincerest homage that can be rendered to the solicitude of the guardians." [Footnote 229]

[Footnote 229: Bulckeus. Report of 1856, pp. 34, 33.]
[Transcriber's note: This line is blurred.]

Nothing better proves how deeply these feelings have penetrated, not merely into individual souls, but into the blood and race, than the conduct of the children of Gheel toward the insane. Elsewhere generally, and even at Horenthals, in the neighborhood, we have seen the unfortunate persecuted and derided. Childhood, especially, is without pity for them. Nothing like this at Gheel. There the Zott is, even for children, an amusing companion, without wickedness, often a comrade of their games, sometimes a protector. It seems that between beings who have not yet quite attained their reason, and those who have lost it, some alliance is formed. Dr. Parigot relates his first visit as inspector to a farm near Gheel. "It was a cold, snowy spell in the winter. The family were pressing round the hearth beneath the vast chimney-place, and the best seat was occupied by a lunatic. The unexpected appearance of a stranger on the threshold of this poor house, troubled the quiet inhabitants a little. The frightened children took refuge, with little cries, between the legs of the maniac. This poor man's affection for the children was vividly depicted in his countenance, as he protected them with a gesture. This affection was, perhaps, the only tie that attached him to society, but this tie of love protected himself, by deserving the regard of his hosts." We have been gently touched by seeing in the streets of Gheel an old man bearing two children in his arms, while two others followed his steps. The intellectual focus was extinct, or projected but a feeble and vacillating light, but the affectional focus still revealed by its glow the moral grandeur of man even in his saddest miseries.

A woman of Gheel was in company with a maniac, when suddenly he was seized with a paroxysm of excitement. The danger was great, her presence of mind was still greater. She took the young child that she was bearing in her arms, and whom the madman loved, placed it in his arms, and availed herself of this diversion to slip out by the door; then, concealed behind the window, she followed with eye and heart the movements of the lunatic. Marvellous calculation! the child had at once and completely calmed the madman, who, having caressed him and set him upon the floor, was now playing with him. A few minutes afterward, the mother could reenter, the crisis was passed. No one at Gheel blamed this conduct in the mother, who had estimated justly the fascination of infancy.

When the equality of age invites to friendship, this becomes very lively between the children of the house and the insane. There is one family which boards a young lunatic, who is also deaf and dumb. She has become a cherished sister for the daughters of her host. When they are at work together, enter and announce that you come to take the afflicted child back to the hospital. Instantly a cry of terror, followed by the precipitate flight of these girls, carrying their friend along with them, will teach you how lively is the alarm of their tenderness.

A woman of beautiful and noble countenance, and superior education, had been found insane at Brussels, without any information concerning her. From her own imperfect answers, it seems she was a native of Mauritius, where her father had been a man of note in the French revolution. Entrusted to a family of farmers at Gheel, they welcomed her with a delicate deference for her probable antecedents. During twenty years, they served a little table apart for her, with more elegance than their own; yet they received on her account only the pittance allowed for paupers. One day when Mr. Parigot mentioned this, they answered him, "It is enough, doctor; we love our little lady, and we wish to keep her here. No one could pay us for what we are doing; but we have no children, and this is our society."

A father on his death-bed had recommended to his daughter a poor lunatic, who had witnessed her birth, and who had amused her when little. When she married, she brought him in dower to her husband by the terms of the contract. Heaven blessed her generosity. The lunatic lived to be nearly a hundred years old. During this period, their house had to be rebuilt; but the spouses made a sacrifice of its symmetry and convenience, so as to leave untouched the cell of this old man which had become endeared to him by a long abode.

The relatives of patients are often too poor to offer presents. One day Dr. Parigot was visiting a young epileptic. As he had always found him well cared for, and knew that his friends came to see him every year, he ventured to ask the mistress of the house what she received on his account. She smiled and replied: "Our Joseph's relations are poor like me, and make their journey afoot. I keep them here a week, and they return afoot, but I give them a rye loaf and bacon to eat on the road. These are our presents." The exercise of these pious and delicate virtues has formed in the heart of the Gheel folk a sentiment of corporate honor and of mutual responsibility, which withstands individual perversions as well as the conflicts of social life. The whole community is interested in the fate of these unfortunates. Every one there might affirm concerning the insane, the humani nihil a me alienum puto.

The household that has no lunatic seems to lack something, and looks out for a favorable occasion to supply this want. The reciprocal supervision of the inhabitants prescribes moderation and justice to all. If woman presides in the household, and man out of doors, the eye of the community, watching over both, protects the weak in the course of daily life, as in the struggles which a paroxysm sometimes necessitates. Denounced by the cries of the victim, any arbitrary violence would be promptly reported to the physicians and to the administration. If official defenders were absent, the public voice would suffice, and it could not be silenced. Any suspicion of improper conduct is readily cleared up by the interchange of visits in the neighborhood, and thus a protection is established permanent, universal, invisible, sanctioned by custom and superior to all administrative patronage or written rule.

A population thus reared in the practice of sincere devotion to a special humanitary office, by immemorial tradition, by interest, by personal and communal honor, and by religious faith, may well bear comparison with the most zealous servants of any public or private asylum. The brothers or sisters of charity, who are but casually guardians of a certain infirmity the more difficult of treatment, because it attacks the soul as well as the body, can hardly possess those hereditary faculties and the thousand expedients which from infancy upward germ in the child and develop in a family and locality, devoted to the treatment of insanity. How much more unequal is the comparison with simple mercenaries! Heaven forbid we should ignore the abnegation of self, so often evinced in the most obscure services, or the unprovided aptitudes which neither danger nor disgust discourage. Yet it cannot be denied that the insane generally persist in regarding all overseers as jailers and complacent tools of the injustice of families or of society. At Gheel, on the contrary, the most susceptible patients can see around them only hosts who take in boarders, and among whom they often find friends and companions. Before all disinterested judgment, what is elsewhere the competition of business here assumes the character of a social and medical mission, while a closer analysis discerns, in this creation of a lively faith sustained at once by charity and interest, a fortunate equilibrium of the springs of human action. The twofold motive of honor and interest acts in effect like a spring regulated by a counterpoise.

Is the guardian distinguished for his sagacity and fidelity in the discharge of his assumed cares? He will be kept upon the list and recommended to families by the administration. He will have the opportunity of selection, and may exercise it so as either to gratify his sympathies or to advance his interests.

In the sphere of a true rural life, are freely developed those affinities which re-ally man with the beast and bird, and this first degree in the scale of affections is far from being without influence on the state of certain patients. Some are interested in the cattle which they tend, in the horses, the dogs, or the birds, of which they make companions. One lunatic at Gheel is constantly thinking of birds; no one is more ingenious than he in catching them. Once caged, he never leaves them, he takes them from his cell into the family apartment, or, while they disport in the sunshine, their vigilant master mounts guard to protect them from their enemy the cat. Is it doubtful that these child-like enjoyments dissipate many sorrows, or that they aid to re-establish the harmony of the soul with the body? Deprive this man of the society of his birds, indubitably his condition will be aggravated. Whether as predisposing or exciting causes, wounded pride and vanity and passional isolation amid the pressure of crowds underlie many forms of insanity. In assembling under his protection the group of inferior animals, every man may innocently satisfy sentiments which are ruffled and disappointed among his own species. Spiritual space is enlarged about him, and the heart is amused by the play of passions similar to his own in organisms so different as to render impossible the collisions of rivalry.

To this first appeasement of internal agitation by all the voices of nature, labor comes to add its powerful revulsion. Its benefits are now so universally known and proclaimed that, wherever space permits, it is becoming one of the bases of treatment. At Bicêtre, the neighboring farm of Saint Anne is in great part cultivated by a squad of lunatics chosen among those who most readily accept the discipline of command and corporeal exercise. Work is at Gheel the easy law of every day and every dwelling, allowing for the antipathy which certain lunatics evince toward every occupation, and for incapacity by certain kinds of illness. But industry at Gheel has this precious distinction, that there the insane works among persons of sane mind, whose speech and actions bring him back to reason, whereas elsewhere he is surrounded with his companions in misfortune, whom he finds the same in the fields as at the asylum. Instead of being sequestrated in fantastic and unnatural society, he continues to live in the real bosom of a social family whose children are reared by his side, he hears rational conversations and witnesses amusing scenes. Does he desire to take part in these? He is obliged to the act of intelligent reflection. Occasions naturally supervene when the lunatic, butting against inflexible reality, is led to recognize the bewilderment of his ideas.

The family compassionates his real or imaginary troubles, and the latter are not the least afflictive. The lunatic is very sensible of such kindness; for among many of them, the memories of childhood, of friendship, or of neighborhood, are preserved quite vivacious amid the ruins of the intellect. The death of a parent or friend will often draw warm tears. The unfortunate is consoled by showing interest in him. When this sympathetic indulgence can no longer be asked of the natural family, where hope for it elsewhere than in the adoptive family? Less discomposed by its tenderness, the latter more easily obtains the obedience of the lunatic, who even through his darkened reason, fails not to perceive that he has neither the right nor the means of imposing his caprices on strangers.

One fact constantly occurs at Gheel upon the arrival of raving maniacs. After a few days passed in their guardian's house they can scarcely be recognized. Coming with the strait-jacket or in bonds, they are appeased as soon, almost, as these are taken off. Must this change be attributed to the new sphere that environs them, to the regard that is extended to them, or to the new current of impressions and ideas that traverses their own folly? These influences, severally useful, are strengthened by their association. Through them, what remains sound in the mind is aided by good tendencies; what there is morbid, is restrained. At Gheel is perpetually renewed the phenomenon which occasioned so much surprise at Bicêtre, at Charenton, and in all the hospitals of Europe, when intrepid humanity broke their chains and whips, considered, until then, the only possible instruments for controlling the insane. It now remains for science to confess that every closed establishment is in itself a chain, the last but the heaviest that remains to be suppressed.

The lunatic taken to an asylum is, from the first, assailed with painful impressions, bunches of large keys, massive doors, bolts, bars, cells, yards, walls, guardians, uniforms, regulations, bells, all the appearances and all the realities of a prison. At Gheel, welcomed with alacrity by the family to which his abode secures a pension, he feels himself at his ease. This first welcome exerts over the insane soul the most auspicious influence; for one who comes from a hospital, it is a true emancipation. By daily repetition, this contentment soon becomes an energetic preference. When of late years certain councils of the Belgium hospitals decided on withdrawing their insane from Gheel, to transfer them to a rival establishment for the sake of some trivial economy, it occasioned the most touching scenes. Guardians and lunatics embraced each other weeping, and several of the latter hid themselves to escape from this transfer. Force had to be employed with others. Besides breaking in upon their affections and their habits, they knew they were passing from liberty to confinement! When questioned on this subject, their feelings clearly appear. A foreign physician visiting Gheel with me, one day asked a lunatic who had spent some time in one of the lock-up establishments, which system he preferred. "You may answer that for yourself," he replied reservedly; but a long and silent look beaming with joy was the expressive interpretation of these words. This attachment to Gheel and to the guardian's family often survives the cure. Guardians have often been known to keep gratuitously, wards restored to their right minds, but who had lost their families or their relations with the world. Not seldom is a friendly correspondence kept up all their lives, while living far apart. Annual pilgrimages from Brussels to Gheel renew ties formed during the malady.

There seems to be no possible doubt that life for the insane is more benign at Gheel than in the immense majority of asylums. Patients sent there in the initial period of insanity, frequently experience a change for the better, and many recover their reason. Some cures have been effected at Gheel, after two or three years of abortive treatment elsewhere. Maniacs, much agitated, in whom the spring of life preserves its energy, are cured sooner than the quiet ones, who often become imbecile. Monomaniacs, especially religious monomaniacs, are seldom cured. They are more fortunate with intermittent forms of insanity, and such are the patients preferred by the Gheelois, as most helpful in their work. Cures are more frequent on the farms, where the insane labor, than in the village, where they are less occupied. It seems to be ascertained that the number of cures has diminished with the falling off in devotion, and this result is no surprise to science, which, without intervening in the religious question, accounts faith among the most powerful therapeutic agents. Among the patients classed as curable, the proportion of cures has averaged between fifty and sixty-five per cent. Unfortunately, about three fifths of the patients sent to Gheel are desperate cases, on whom all the resources of art have been vainly exhausted elsewhere; for Gheel makes no flourish of trumpets, and only of late years has possessed even an infirmary, or a corps of physicians. Its simple hygiene of liberty, and the family life of poor peasants, is not calculated to exert the prestige of those sadly magnificent palaces in which the insane are confined by thousands, and where pretentious science so unwisely snubs nature. Certain medical administrators have even pretended that Gheel was only fit for the incurable. Formerly, they came in search of miracles; now, they seek a last abode here. It should be remarked, moreover, that hospitals, where the keeping of the insane is a burden, are inclined to dismiss them as cured on the earliest signs of real improvement; while at Gheel, where their keeping is a source of profit, and where the patient is often more comfortable than at home, nothing hastens his departure, which is authorized only after mature examination by the physician of the section and the general inspector. The chances are greater here than elsewhere, that the patient's dismissal corresponds to a solid cure.

In default of complete restoration, the conditions of life at Gheel determine in the insane a general amelioration which constitutes the gentlest manner of being compatible with mental derangement. The morbid state, reduced to its simplest expression, excludes neither physical comfort nor a certain order of moral enjoyments, some of which are delicate even to refinement. The subversive tendencies are attenuated, if not quite annulled. A young lady, confined for a year in a large asylum, used to break up there everything that she could lay her hands upon, and the severest restraints had to be forced on her. At Gheel, free among the peasants, she breaks up only little bits of wood. Unable to overcome entirely the fatal impulse that besets her, still she understands that she is in a family which deserves consideration, since, far from oppressing her, they allow her to obey her instinctive needs of active movement. The young lunatic does her hosts as little harm as she can, and this trait admirably exhibits the influence of Gheel, which mitigates when it cannot cure, and obtains, better than any other system, the state of passive "innocence."

This innocence rises occasionally to a sympathetic and rational benevolence. Among the old lunatics there are, generally, compatriots or acquaintances of the new-comers. The former become the interpreters of their companions in misfortune; they initiate them into the kind of life led at Gheel; they advise them how to manage, point out to them what the place presents of interest, and thus assist in naturalizing them. If liberty is the first principle of the colonial system, labor is the second. Although every lunatic is free to abstain from it, and no physical discipline or coercive measure is brought to bear on him, a few sympathetic words and example frequently suffice to wean the insane from idleness. From half to two thirds of the whole number are usefully occupied. The household cares are shared by women, by the aged and the infirm, along with the children and servants of the family. Most of the artisans, such as tailors, shoe-makers, cabinet-makers, blacksmiths, bakers, curriers, etc., find a place in the local industry. Some work on their own account, and are patronized in proportion to their skill. There used to be at Gheel an excellent cabinet-maker, very intelligent, and who earned a good deal of money in the exercise of his trade. A Dutchman, he had served in the French army, was made prisoner in Russia, then incorporated among the Cossacks of the Don. In 1815, being in Belgium, he deserted, or rather resumed his liberty and nationality, and married at Brussels, where he fell into hallucinations which occasioned his transportation to Gheel. He lived twenty-five years there, practising his art with success, and talked very rationally about matters in general, only he affirmed that the devil every night entered his body by the heels, and lodged somewhere in it, which led him to conclude all his discourses by asking for a probe to hunt the evil spirit. Care is taken to place every lunatic in a family so situated in village or country, as to employ his or her industrial capacities to the best advantage. The furious maniacs are most in request by the peasants, a preference easily explained. Fury attests the energy of the organism; the internal force, physical or moral, is disordered but abundant. In their periods of calm, madmen of this class are vigorous laborers; whereas no profit can be made of an idiot or a paralytic. On a sudden and violent paroxysm of acute mania, the farmer's family, aided by the passengers and neighbors, soon obtain control of it. Quieted again, the lunatic resumes his work, and this work, which profits the farmer, ameliorates by an energetic and continuous diversion the state of the patient, rendering his paroxysms less frequent.

Although the importance of working is now very generally understood, few asylums are provided with adequate grounds, workshops, and implements for employing their patients to advantage; hence this progress is still a rare exception, and even when it exists, its benefit is much diminished by the vexatious constraint of its discipline resembling penitentiary labor. In most of the rich establishments life passes in oppressive idleness, leaving the patient all day long to his dreams, without procuring him that muscular fatigue so propitious to sleep at night. It is enough to drive a sane man mad.

As for mental occupation with books, games, spectacles, and social assemblies, they tend to excite instead of reducing the circulation of the brain, and are often opposed to the desired equilibrium of the organism. In the Russian hospitals, the military organization of labor becomes but a tribute of passive obedience to absolute authority, and ceases to effect energetic revulsion from the bewilderment of the mind. So needlework affords to women a kind of instinctive or mechanical activity of the fingers, which leaves the imagination vagabond. Such labors, prolonged for many hours, are so much the more objectionable from their sedentary nature, which rather favors than averts glandular obstructions and correlative disturbance in the circulatory and nervous systems.

The mode of life of the small farmer, considered as a whole, combines natural interests with varied occupations and movements requiring skill and strength in moderate degree, observation and attention. Above all, man feels himself here a direct coagent with the elemental forces, a shareholder in the commonwealth of the universe, alternately obeying and commanding, utilizing and enjoying the play of solar and planetary forces. It is true that all have not equally the intellectual consciousness of their participation in this great drama, nor the intimate satisfaction and dignity that accrue from it; yet none can be alien to its penetrating virtues, they sustain the meanest hind and the most oppressed slave; much more, the free, the voluntary, and amateur collaborator. The aspects of nature wear the color of the spirit; they are sanative in proportion as man becomes the mirror, the guide, and the instrument of her powers. In the prisoner, at best their suggestions cherish painful aspirations. For the free laborer alone are they pregnant with infinite sweetness.

The arts, and especially music, contribute to the social life of Gheel, and repeat for many a tormented spirit the experience of David with Saul. [Footnote 230]

[Footnote 230: I Kings xvi. 23.]

A lunatic, surnamed Colbert the Great, a skilful violinist, founded the harmony or choral society, and his name is still honored in the memory of all the Gheelois. His portrait adorns the hall where the society holds its meetings, and this homage attests the cordial fraternity, devoid of prejudices and of false shame, which characterizes the Gheel folk. In their concerts, at patriotic or religious festivals, the parts are distributed to the musicians according to the irrespective talents; if they play or sing well, nothing more is required. To improve natural gifts, there is a singing-school for the insane. Müller, a distinguished German composer and chief of the harmony club, is the director designated by the public voice, who solicits the honor of forming, among the insane, pupils who shall assist him in his concerts.

Several of the insane are members of the choir of Saint Dymphna. Many of them piously mingle in the processions. They are often seen in this church imploring on their knees the grace of heaven. Only those whose illusion it is to believe themselves gods or kings, do not kneel, but otherwise behave themselves with decency and respect. Here, as elsewhere, individuals subject to aberrations of reason, still undergo the influence of the prevailing tone and manner of deportment, and give in their turn good examples. They are generally much attached to the faith of their childhood. In health or in sickness, and at the approach of death, they are admitted to the sacraments of the church whenever their condition is not such as to exclude moral conscience. These acts raise the poor lunatic in his self-respect, and in the eyes of the population they are a medicine of the soul.

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, when the rigors previously enforced against the insane were relaxed, a king was the first to experience the benefits of an opposite system. George III. was treated by Willis on the conditions of personal liberty, out-door amusements, and the family life. The sons of Willis, faithful to their father's lessons, continued to receive at Greatford, lunatics boarded in private families, but at prices which limited this privilege to the wealthy. Gheel, without splendid palaces, gardens, and parks, which delight visitors, but make little impression on those who are used to them, accords to the poorest the treatment of George III., and with the precious addition of work.

In France, Pinel was the promoter and persevering apostle of the reform first inaugurated at Bicêtre, then extended to the Salpétrière and Charenton. Aiming to raise to the dignity of patients those hapless victims who had previously been treated as criminals or as wild beasts, beaten and chained, he realized half his programme in making them simple prisoners, watched and cared for with intelligence. His successes were propagated throughout Europe, and all public or private asylums abandoned the system of direct violence or constraint, to give, in the measure of their resources in grounds and buildings, a larger part to liberty of action and to labor. The so-called "non-restraint" system of England merely substitutes for active cruelties dark cells padded with mattresses. Some asylums endeavor to utilize the influence of the director's family circle, but only at Gheel are the common rights of man accorded to the insane. Benevolent sentiments toward the insane have been cherished in Mohammedan countries; regular and methodical labor with a view to economy is common to many establishments; excursions and amusements are organized by a few: but nowhere so effectively as at Gheel have liberty, sympathy, and labor been combined in the common interest of the insane and of their keepers. These, with the sedative influence of a mild, moist climate on the temperament, and the consolations of religion for the soul, have almost divested insanity of its dangers, and authorize emancipation from those chains of stone which elsewhere weigh no less than chains of iron on the unhappy victims of fear and distrust.

This humble parish addresses to every conscience a lesson eloquent in its simplicity of tender devotion toward our brothers the most fallen, and whom the world disdains and repulses. It shows how charity may precede and complete science.

Life's Charity.

And the great sea closed over that wild struggle, and the wreck went down with its precious freight of immortality!

There was a single cry that came from the white lips, one glance from the tearless, appealing eyes.

"All ready!" sounded a rough voice from the long-boat.

"For my child!" she called out to me, above the awful din and tumult. And I could only clench the rosary with its precious crucifix in my bosom, and spring into the already crowded boat. I missed and fell, and, grasping an oar, fought the angry sea for life.

I vaguely recollect a fearful shriek, as the steamer turned and settled; and when she sank, the strong current drew in the last of the boats, the boat in which she had taken refuge. I closed my eyes, but in my ear rang the agony, the wild despair of that cry, "My God! my God!" I suppose I fainted; for I only remember opening my eyes on the deck of a small vessel, which was scudding under bare poles before a perfect hurricane. Weeks passed by, and in a quiet English village, on the soft, balmy south coast, I lay trying to regain the strength which brain fever had quite exhausted.

My kind English nurse told me that through it all I grasped the rosary, and her heart was touched by my devotion to the crucifix. This recalled that fearful autumn morning, when, amid the dimness of the fog, the Arctic went down to her burial.

Reverently I kissed the crucifix, and murmured my Credo; from the very depths of my soul went upward, "I believe in God!" Then, as I clasped the cross, I felt it move; but I went through my prayers, and I suppose that the pressure of my hands caused the spring to move, and a closely folded paper fell upon my breast. The crucifix was large and hollow. I carefully unfolded the delicate paper, and a shudder passed over me as the vision of that pale woman, struggling amid the breakers, arose from memory's gloaming. The very first words that met my eye were, "I believe in God! and," she wrote, "I will follow his guidance. Far from those that are dearest to me, I have buried my husband where his fathers rest; and now, my child's voice calls me from my home across the Atlantic. I dreamed last night of a fog, a dense mist, that hung like a curtain; of a fearful crash, and a vision of anguish that seems too real for dreaming; but my child's voice is echoing in my heart, and may God speed my wanderings! A sorrow as of coming woe oppresses me; but I believe in God! and his mercy will save me.

"My little daughter, Marguerite Cecil, is with her guardian, Henry Alan, No. 86 East —— street, New York. May the everlasting Arms forever enfold her!

Ruth Cecil."

Poor lamb! my heart whispered, the one idol, and so desolate! Well, the spring found me on my journey to the busy metropolis; and wending my way to East —— street, I found the most elfish little fairy that fate had ever set drifting on life's ocean all alone. A bonnie wee thing was Madge Cecil; so frail that her tenure here seemed too slight for holding; yet from the wonderful gray eyes came flashes that gave promise of a splendid future. Golden hair courted the sunbeams, and, flecked with light, wrapped around the most graceful contour that twelve summers had ever shone upon. She knew of her mother's death, for her deep mourning dress contrasted almost painfully with the delicate whiteness of her complexion. And when I drew her upon my knee and put the rosary in her hand, she threw her arms around me, and sobbed as though her heart would break. I really trembled as I listened, for a storm of passionate agony was convulsing a frame which had little to offer in combat. "Mamma! mamma!" she sobbed out, and she clasped me closer. "Will God take me home to her? O mamma! come back!"

My heart ached for the child, whose grief seemed agonizing her very soul, so I tried to quiet her, and told her of the brighter home where, with the holy Mother of God, her own mother would be singing hallelujahs. I told her that this earth was only a brief journeying-place which led to the sweet haven of eternal love, the land where farewells could never bring a cloud, nor partings cast a shadow. Then the large gray eyes looked trustingly up into my face, and with her arms around me, I felt the love of my heart go out toward her with a strength and purity I had never known before.

Soon after this, her guardian placed her at Madame Cathaire's large boarding-school, and "Uncle Hal," as she now called me, was always her chosen confidant and friend.

Years passed, and I watched her beautiful girlhood unfold. She had rare talents, a quick intellect, and intense appreciation of the beautiful; indeed, a purer spirit seldom lived in this mortal tenement. Yet, with her enthusiastic, impulsive nature, she possessed a quiet strength of control that caused visions of the old martyrs to rise; for I felt that she, too, could wrestle with passion, and, with God's grace, subdue all sin.

And thus time sped on, and each passing season left its impress only to mature and render more perfect the succeeding; and her eighteenth birthday found her the realization of spiritual loveliness. The exquisite golden curls of her childhood fell in irregular waves from the low Grecian brow, and the sweet, earnest eyes always recalled those of Guido's angel, bearing the branch of lilies, in his beautiful picture of "The Annunciation." She was living with her guardian, and her great wealth attracted many in a city where gold is "the winning card."

There was a charming freshness and naïveté in the young girl, and at times almost a religious light gleamed from the depths of her large gray eyes.

Her guardian's nephew, Henry Elsdon, had just returned from Europe, and I watched him as he dallied, at first carelessly, among the crowd that gathered around her.

I did not fancy the young man, and there was an indescribable barrier which rose up always when I tried to like him. He was what the world would call handsome and distingué, but the droop of the lower lip, the heavy jaw, and narrow forehead truly told of the fierce animal nature within. Madge was very lovely in this first season, and it was plainly apparent that he entirely failed to impress her; indeed, at times her coldness toward him was marked.

On returning from vespers, one mild May evening, she asked me to accompany her on her Sunday visits. Of course, I went, for who could refuse her? Down the dark streets we wandered, till we arrived at an old brick house that, a hundred years ago, may possibly have been in its prime. She tapped at the dingy door, and, like an angel of light, her presence seemed to brighten the room. A sick woman lay stretched on a miserable pallet, and a racking cough shook her weak frame; but a smile of happiness illumined the pinched features, and her voice was tender as it thanked Madge for her gentle deeds of love.

A woman's kindliness is nevermore beautifully displayed than in a sick chamber; and my heart did homage to the young girl, as she knelt by the sick woman's bed, murmuring, in low, comforting tones, the prayer:

"Visit, we beseech thee, O Lord! this habitation, and drive far from it all the snares of the enemy. May thy holy angels dwell herein, to preserve her in peace; and may thy holy benedictions always remain with her, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Her face was radiant, and her upturned eyes were holy with inspiration. Just then a shadow darkened the doorway, and I looked, to meet the eyes of one perfectly absorbed in the scene before him. My startled movement recalled Madge, and a soft color deepened in her cheeks as she seemed to feel the observation of the stranger.

"O Miss Cecil! here is Mr. Grey, who has been as kind as yourself. This is Miss Cecil, Mr. Grey." And then he advanced, and the fading sunlight fell upon a splendid specimen of manhood. Six feet of magnificently proportioned height, and a head which Vandyke would have gloried in; steel-gray, flashing eyes, a brow upon which intellect and will were marked, and a complexion which the suns of Southern Europe had darkened into olive.

"Pardon me. Miss Cecil, but the likeness is perfect, and the name so familiar. Was your mother Ruth Anderson?"

Tears streamed from her eyes as she half-whispered, "Yes!" She could never speak calmly of her mother, for her love seemed only to strengthen as years made the loss more keenly felt. In an instant he was by her side, and, with the tender but perfectly respectful manner—the manner so acceptable to a woman—he told her how eagerly he had sought for this child of his old and esteemed friend. He had gone abroad with her mother, and remained in Europe till within a few months. He had read of the fearful doom of the Arctic, and vainly tried to trace the child.

"I need not tell you, Madge, how very glad I am to see you, and, before long, I shall hope to be a very good friend."

And they did meet very often. Madge spent the summer at Newport, and Mr. Grey's cottage was near her guardian's lovely home. I suppose there is truth in the old and familiar theory of elective affinities; for the strength of his nature seemed to absorb her gentle, loving trust, and her impulsive, passionate heart was entirely swayed by his steady, strong affection; in truth, each chord felt the echo from his. And so, in the autumn, I was not surprised when she pointed to a magnificent solitaire diamond on the forefinger of her left hand, and told me that she had promised to be the wife of Newton Grey.

They had returned to New York, and Madge and Mr. Grey were looking over a portfolio of engravings at the further end of the library, while I sat smoking in front of the bright coal-fire, dreaming day-dreams, as the smoke curled and floated away, when suddenly the door opened and Henry Elsdon came in. I shall never forget the look that, only for one single moment, darkened his features; only for an instant his face looked thus, and then, with a quick, soft step, he crossed the library, and suavely joined the circle around the engravings. I could see that Newton Grey would never stoop to suspect him; but Madge recoiled from him, for there was not the slightest affinity between such natures.

"Uncle Hal," she told me one morning, "I always feel that I ought to cross myself when Henry Elsdon comes near me, that I may pray to be saved from some impending evil."

And my lamb was right, for truly a wolf did prey near for her destruction.

Business called me to the South, and I left New York to breathe the balmier air of Charleston. It was a delicious winter, that soft season in the sunny South. Violets in the gardens in December, and the scarlet winter roses and sweet mignonette brightening the lovely villa—like houses on the battery.

I was slowly descending the stone steps that led from the beautiful cathedral, while the last echoes of the bishop's gentle voice yet rang in my ears, when a letter was put into my hands by my friend Colonel Everett. I did not open it then, but strolled down Broad street, to the Mills House, and in my pleasant room I sat down to enjoy Madge Cecil's confidence. Imagine my horror as I read:

"Come to me, dear Uncle Hal, for God alone can strengthen me in this fearful sorrow. I cannot understand, but yesterday Mr. Grey left me after a short visit, and to-day they tell me that he is dead. I hear low whisperings of a terrible sin, of which Henry Elsdon is guilty. For my dead mother's sake, come and aid your desolate Madge."

I left that evening, and on Saturday held my darling in my arms. Then the whole story in its fearful detail was repeated. Henry Elsdon had wished to marry my ward, but she had refused him, some time before her engagement with Newton Grey. Elsdon's pride was piqued, and he determined to be revenged. Then began a system of deceit that was Machiavelian; for with subtle skill he won Grey's friendship, till at last, in one unguarded moment, he dared to speak lightly of Madge. In an instant Grey rose, his face white with a terrible calm:

"I am in my own rooms, Mr. Elsdon, therefore you are safe; but you must feel that each word that you have uttered shall be retracted, else there can be but one settlement."

"And, by God! there shall be but one settlement!" And Elsdon's face glared with hate.

And so in the code that teaches murder—cold, passionless, brutal murder—they sought refuge; and Newton Grey fell, pierced through the temples.

Sorrows seem truly convoyed on this ocean of life, this sea of wild unrest; for in a few months Mr. Alan lost his fortune, and, of course, my ward's wealth was also engulfed in the great whirlpool of ruin.

A strange suspicion clouded my heart, and with an intuition of the truth, I felt that I could single out the demon who had spread destruction in this home.

But with the suavity of deceit, he subtly turned aside the tide of censure, so justly his due, and the world even forgave him for the duel; for strange travestied stories floated through the city. Who gave them to the public? I felt, I knew that Henry Elsdon had only added to the infamy which weighed upon his soul; but as yet the avenger had not struck, the race of hell had not been accomplished! ...

It was the exciting winter of '60 — December, 1860! South Carolina had torn herself from her sisters, and Washington was in a ferment. Crowds congregated at the hotels to watch the opening of a season fraught with destiny. Men with reckless, evil passions increased the excitement; for cognac burned and whiskey infuriated, and the whole mass of humanity seemed consumed by the one madness, mutual hate!

It was the evening of the 27th of December. The telegraph had spread the news of Anderson's evacuation of Fort Moultrie, and the agitation was culminating in effort. There is a season when enthusiasm pulses, till the wild madness intoxicates all feeling; then some sudden crowding on of events drives the fierce current into action, and the mighty mass heaves and surges with one will, one heart, for the conflict; and so it was to night. I stood on the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Seventh street, watching the changing faces which the gas-light flared upon, when a woman's voice in wild terror startled me. "In the name of the cross, forbear!" she cried. And I turned to see a face pale with fear and horror. In an instant I was beside her; she held the cross of her rosary toward the man who had dared, not only to insult a woman, but one of God's ministering angels, those pure spirits of comfort, the Sisters of Mercy.

I struck the brute from her, but not without recognizing the features, even though inflamed and distorted by liquor. She almost fainted in my arms, but I placed her in my sister's carriage, just then passing, and ordered it to drive to the address which she gave.

What there was in the tones of that woman's voice I could not explain to myself; but a sad chord vibrated till the echoes waked in my heart feelings that I thought were sleeping quietly in a jealously guarded grave of the past. ...

Four years had gone by since that night, and the war that shook this continent had closed; ended were the years that had brought their holocaust, the proof of the calibre of the men who had died on the field of honor.

Grant's triumphant legions garrisoned the Confederate capital, and I was appointed surgeon in charge of —— Hospital, where the sick and wounded of both armies were tended by the Sisters of Mercy.

The intense heat of those early summer days I can never forget, and the poor fellows in blue and gray tossed from side to side on the narrow cots in the fever wards. It was my night in —— Hospital, for I was appointed to relieve Dr. ——, and I observed a "sister" bending over a patient whose white face and faint voice told me that his hours were numbered.

"Sister Mary," said the feeble tones, "will you bathe my temples? they burn and throb as fiercely as my own heart. Sister, can a vile wretch ask you to stand near when he is dying? Sister, you who are pure and holy, tell me if God will pardon me?"

"He came to save sinners!" I heard the low voice whisper. And she smoothed back the tangled masses of dark, waving hair, and tenderly soothed the poor fevered brow on which the dews of death were gathering. "Stay near me, sister. Let me hold your hand, while I listen to your voice, that recalls one in the long ago. O God! look down in mercy!"

And she whispered sweet words of comfort that calmed the unrest of sin and shame.

"Sister, if I could give all the years that I have wasted, if I would toil and struggle and pray for pardon, would Christ have mercy upon one whose years are heavily weighted with sin?"

"Repent, and ye shall be saved."

"Ah God! I do repent, and if a thousand years of suffering could atone for all, I would not shrink from a single pang. Sister," and he turned and held her hand closer, and gazed long and anxiously into her half-averted face. "My God! can it be?" But she turned further into the shadowy twilight, and her face was almost hidden. "Sister, I must tell you, because there is something in your tone and look, though I cannot see you well, that brings her back to me; so be patient for a little while and do not leave me yet. In the long ago I loved, and she whom I worshipped gave me no return. I think that circumstances might have moulded her differently, though my selfish passions taught me then to care for little, save what contributed to my own gratification. Well, I watched her love for another, and the devil influenced me; he stole away my truth, my love, my honor! I was mad with jealousy, I was wild with disappointed love, and I swore to be revenged. Therefore the schemes I laid, the deceit I practised; ay, I bided well my time. I stole the friendship of her lover, and poured my poison into his ears; but his noble nature shamed me, his trust could not be shaken; then—ah! how well I remember the evening—I spoke of her as my heart never believed; I lied, wickedly, maliciously lied, upon her! Then his knightly spirit rose, and he fell by my hand! I had begun; the poison was maddening; I could not stop, even though murder barred my path; so I counselled her guardian as to investments, and in one mad moment her fortune crashed with his.

"Still I tracked her on her mission of mercy to Washington; I dogged her steps when she left the couch of the sick woman whose death agonies she had soothed; I stood near the door of the wretched hovel, listening to the sweet tones of her voice that is haunting me to-night; and—I hardly knew what I was doing, I only felt that there was yet something undone which might humble her, might place her at my mercy; hell's fires raged in my heart—and, may God forgive me, but I spoke words to her which no man should utter and live. But she escaped me, and was torn from my grasp, while her pallid face grew whiter still as she spoke in terror, 'In the name of the cross, forbear!'

"Since that evening, I have never seen her face; but, sister, to-night all her saintly purity comes back to shame me, and I feel that the flames of hell would be less fiery if I could hear her say, 'I forgive you!'" There was a brief pause; the twilight of June shadowed the whitewashed wards, and the young moon shed a soft light over the starry heavens; but was it a message that flashed from Our Lady's crown, that lit the pallet over which the sister leaned? Ay, the face of Guido's angel, the angel of the lilies, shone over the dying man, as the sweet voice whispered, "Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you."

"Her voice!" he cried. And a sudden strength seemed to possess him; for, seizing her hand, he pushed back the black bonnet, and whispered, "Madge Cecil, dare I pray for your pardon?"

"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen." And she gave him her crucifix, which he pressed to his lips.

"Then let me die in your faith; for, if its doctrines teach you even to forgive me, then through the prayers of your church will God grant mercy to my soul." He fainted in her arms, and she summoned me.

"Dr. ——, take care of him till my return."

I had heard it all, but she failed to recognize me. Grief had whitened my hair, and an iron-gray beard covered my face; and I preferred that she should not know me yet Soon I saw her return with Father Baker. My cordial had revived Elsdon, and in faint voice he repeated his wish.

"Let me be received, father, into the communion of the Holy Catholic Church, and pray God to have mercy on my soul."

The time was short, and no precious moment of it was to be lost. The good priest proceeded at once to his work of preparing the poor man for death. His penitence seemed sincere and profound, and his desire for the sacraments of the church most earnest. They were at once administered to him; and on his fervently expressed wish that the holy viaticum might be permitted to him, it was brought.

A snowy linen cloth was spread on the table by his bed, and two candles placed beside the crucifix. Solemnly we gathered near, for we felt that his life was fast fleeting. I have never seen nor realized more of the agony of contrition than when he slowly repeated after the priest, suffering at each word most intensely, "Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!" At last he grew calmer. A quiet peace rested on his pale face, and after receiving the most holy communion, he murmured faintly, "Jesus, have mercy on me! Holy Mary, pray for me!" and folding the crucifix to his heart, he closed his eyes and we thought he slept. A deathlike stillness reigned, broken only by the solemn tones of the priest's voice: "Into thy hands we commend his spirit, which has been created and redeemed by thee!"

And in that pentecostal hour, when the storm of her life wailed its wild requiem in her heart, a holy calm, as a message from God, glorified her exquisite face, for the Comforter had sealed her with the expiation—the working out of life's great charity— "Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

The Rights Of Catholic Women.
By A Lady.

[We took occasion, some months ago, to sketch a number of the charitable works of Paris, in the hope of stirring the emulation of some of our leisured, zealous, and wealthy fellow-citizens to undertake something of the kind in this densely crowded city. The correspondent whose communication is given below, and whose contributions have often graced our pages, has felt her soul stirring with the same impulse in visiting Catholic Europe. Her earnest words came appropriately after the letter we published last month respecting a Refuge or Central Mission-House for vagabond children. There lies an open field where hundreds may work without jostling each other; and we hope this iron may be hammered while it is hot into a practical shape, and not merely serve as a poker to a useless fire of sentimental philanthropy. There is nothing like reducing the abstract to the concrete, sentiment to work, resolution to definite action.

We venture to suggest something else, also, to those of our fair readers who may be awakened to a desire of claiming their woman's rights by the appeal of their gifted countrywoman. It is practical, and yet not so difficult, as sending checks for one thousand dollars, or searching the streets for vagrant children. A society exists in Paris for making and embroidering vestments and other ornaments for the altars of poor churches and missions. Why not inaugurate the same work among the ladies of New York, for the benefit, first, of small country churches and chapels in our own diocese, and secondarily of similar churches elsewhere? We cannot rival Paris by a sudden coup de main or accomplish everything in a day. But it is possible to make a beginning with one necessary work of charity after another, and to bring them gradually to the colossal dimensions which want and misery and vice have attained without any effort.—Ed. C. W.]

In The Atlantic Monthly of April and May, 1868, appeared a generous and high-toned article, entitled "Our Roman Catholic Brethren," in which the author, appreciating the fact that no one can lose ground by treating with justice those who differ from him in opinion, frankly recognized the noble struggles of our priesthood and the success with which they have been crowned.

One assertion in this article we shall venture to comment upon, making this the occasion for a few suggestions to the Catholic women of the United States, whose right to share the labors of Catholic men is inalienable and incontestable, being founded upon the unvarying teaching of the church.

The author, in speaking of a missionary bishop whom he had known and respected as an "absolute gentleman," an "exquisite human being," in whom all the frailties springing from self-love had been consumed, leaving the "whole man kind, serene, urbane, and utterly sincere," concludes thus: "A Catholic priest, indeed, would be much to blame if he failed to attain a high degree of serenity, moral refinement, and paternal dignity;" because, be it understood, he has neither family cares nor business anxieties to harass him.

Most assuredly true, so far as concerns priests in a Catholic country, where the ranks of the priesthood are full; perhaps true in a purely missionary country, where the priest, in his intervals of repose, communes with his only companions, God and nature; absolutely untrue when applied to a parish priest in the United States, drained of his spiritual riches all day, and often half the night, and for relaxation thrown sometimes upon the companionship of his inferiors. It is no uncommon thing to see a noble priest, at the very centre and core of life, when powers should be ripe, strength unbroken, hope and nerves unshaken, break down, crushed under the weight of work which should have been divided between several persons, leaving to each one work enough to occupy a man of average capacity, time for study, and time for the recuperation of his spiritual powers by prayer and meditation.

Now, where is the remedy for this? Not in a sufficient number of clergymen, because we cannot hope for such a blessing for many years to come. Not in a diminution of labor, thank God, for the domain of the church is constantly widening, and souls are clamoring more and more eagerly for the privileges of religion. The assistance must come from the laity, not working each one after a fashion of his or her own, but in a systematic manner, doing the work recommended by the parish priest in the way most agreeable to him.

That the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul contains all the elements necessary for providing Catholic men with missionary work, we are well aware; therefore we address ourselves exclusively to Catholic women.

Early in February of the present year, on a radiant Roman day, the remains of Saint Ignatius, bishop and martyr, were brought in triumph to the Colosseum from their resting-place in San Clemente. There, where, 1758 years before, the cry had gone up from 80,000 spectators, "Ignatius to the lions!" the Litany of the Saints arose to heaven; there, where wild beasts had snarled over their consecrated prey, canonized bones lay on a gorgeous bier, surrounded by cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious, gathering about them in veneration. One, at least, of those who watched the scene from the crumbling galleries, asked herself eagerly if God has ceased to call upon his children for sacrifices, as he called upon the early Christians; and conviction answered. No; that, though martyrdom has a mysterious value in the eyes of the church, she tenderly loves those who patiently endure the pangs of "that incurable malady which we call life."

And the Christian passing through the catacombs of Rome to-day, pausing in silent awe beside the tombs of martyred virgins, mothers, children, and pontiffs, draws in with every breath the same glorious assurance which gave them strength to suffer—the assurance that God would have us serve him with every nerve and fibre of our being. He claims from the nineteenth century, as he claimed from the first, not, indeed, its blood, but its energies, its faith, its charity. He summons every soul capable of the sacrifice of self to a life in the catacombs, to a holy, interior solitude, where his inspirations can be distinctly heard, where the buzz and hum of the world are inaudible. And as, after the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the early Christians were dismissed, and sent back to the performance of their ordinary avocations, invigorated and renewed; so God releases such souls after communing with them, and sends them forth to work for him, setting upon them three signs to distinguish them from other laborers—peace, simplicity, and perseverance.

In the early ages the laity suffered martyrdom with the clergy. In our own day, the laity should share the labor of the clergy. We are not summoned to bear witness to God in one mighty confession of faith sealed with our blood; but we are bound to show our fidelity to him by lives of unremitting devotion, to lighten the burdens weighing on the priesthood, to do our utmost to leave them leisure for the direction of souls, and for those works of supererogation which are the very heart and pulses of a life consecrated to God.

There are four things which we do not wish to recommend to Catholic women; namely, neglect of domestic duties, overexertion on the part of invalids, indiscreet activity in recent converts, the undertaking of difficult enterprises by those who are not gifted with executive faculty.

Home is the training-school of souls, and a mother's chief duty is to her husband and children. The physically weak serve God by renunciation and sacrifice, hardest and noblest of all apostleships. Converts, generally speaking, should show their families, by tact, affection, fidelity to home duties, that conversion has only knit them more closely to old friends and to natural claims; and this is seldom consistent with much exterior activity soon after conversion. It is very rarely advisable to undertake any work of importance without the advice of a judicious confessor; a just appreciation of one's personal strength and weakness is too rare a gift to be relied upon as a right.

It is our misfortune in the United States that the number of communities is very small in proportion to the work to be done; but though a clergyman would rather receive assistance from religious than from any one else, he would gratefully accept the aid of women of the world, provided they were possessed of judgment, tact, and perseverance.

To take up a charitable enterprise from love of excitement and lay it aside just as one's assistance had become valuable, would not be a proceeding modelled on the actions of the early Christians.

To make one's way into a public institution to patients or prisoners in a manner at variance with the regulations of the establishment, would not tend to advance the cause of religion.

To foster the whims of the poor and excite in them false wants, would add to their sufferings, not lessen them.

All these mistakes may easily be made by well-meaning persons who have not prudence. With fidelity, modesty, and common sense, it is impossible to make serious blunders, and it is possible to do a great deal of good without the sacrifice of much time or comfort.

Those who have health and leisure can work for the church; those who are too busy or too ill to undertake missionary labor can pray for the church. All who have an hour to spend or an ave and pater to recite, or an ache or a pain to offer to Almighty God, can do their share of the blessed work.

Without questioning the fact that the highest of all vocations is the call to a religious life—conceding the point that the work done by women has been usually better done by religious than by women of the world—we think there is a tendency to deny, to that obligation resting upon us all to do the work God marked out for us, the name of vocation, unless it leads us to a life in the community or to marriage. We venture to predict that an important share is to be taken in the work of the church in this country by women who have neither a vocation to join a religious order nor to marry.

There is a correspondence between the various vocations of religious orders and those of persons living in the world. Let us read over the golden record, and decide which path we are called to follow. There are the working orders, Sisters of Charity, of Mercy, of the Good Shepherd; the teaching orders, Ursulines, Sisters of the Visitation, Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and that sweetest of orders, the Sisters of Notre Dame, whose fame is hidden behind humility and obedience; and the contemplative orders, on whose prayers hang the fruit of thousands of energetic enterprises.

Most of the prisons, work-houses, and hospitals in the United States need the influence of judicious women. As such institutions are almost exclusively filled with poor people, and as more than half our poor people are Catholics, more than half the inmates of asylums, penitentiaries, etc., are Catholics; it is, then, a matter of justice that Catholic prisoners, patients, and paupers should be under Catholic influences. Obedience to discipline is a principle most strongly inculcated by the church, and no consistent servant of the church will infringe the smallest regulation in any institution to which he has admission. When this truth is fully recognized, Catholic ladies will be allowed to visit freely all the public establishments in the Union. Let those who wish to do work corresponding to that of the working orders use all available opportunities for alleviating the sufferings and ameliorating the condition of the lower classes.

There are hosts of children who must learn the catechism; not after a parrot-like fashion, such as any ignorant person can teach it to them, but in a vital manner, so that the truth shall be set in their souls like a jewel, to be transmitted to future generations as a precious heritage. Every well-disposed and intelligent Catholic child can be sent forth from his course of instruction in the Sunday-school with the fervent determination to be a missionary in his own little sphere. Those who emulate the labors of the teaching orders have not far to seek for their work.

The Catholic literature of France, Germany, and Italy should be in general circulation in America, through the medium of good translations. Women are especially fitted to be translators. Their impressionable and adaptive minds make it easy for them to understand an author's thought and adopt his style. Let those who would follow in the footsteps of the contemplatives of earlier ages, whose leisure hours were given to writing for the benefit of religion, study critically their mother tongue and one other modern language, and thus unlock some of the treasures of foreign literature to those less gifted than themselves.

But enough, and more than enough for the present. We have sought to arouse a sense of the importance of the work to be done, not to explain the best method of accomplishing it. We have tried to show Catholic women what are their rights, leaving it to God to awaken in them a noble ambition to claim and appropriate those rights.

The Last Gasp Of The Anti-catholic Faction.

Protestantism and the Protestant denominations may be considered under two aspects. Under one aspect, the former is an imperfect Christianity, and the latter are societies professing each a certain form of this Christianity. As such we respect them, recognize the Christian and evangelical truths they retain, honor the virtue and goodness which are found among their adherents, and freely admit their great utility in many important particulars. We have no desire to wage a fierce polemical war upon them, but rather desire to discuss with them in a fraternal spirit the differences between us, the causes which keep us in separation, and the means of reconciliation and reunion.

Under the other aspect, the one is a denial of the first principles of Christianity, and the others are aggregations under the control of party-leaders whose principal object is the destruction of the church of Christ with its dogmas and discipline. Although particular denominations do not avow a hostile intent toward all dogma and discipline, each one professing to maintain whatever it has selected as its constitutive principle out of the entire Christian system, yet the general sum and result of their combined efforts against the Catholic Church tends to the utter demolition of Christianity. This active, anti-Catholic Protestantism in our own day and country is principally confined to a comparatively small fraction of nominal Protestants. It is a wheel within a wheel, an imperium in imperio, a ring, a faction, very impotent, but extremely turbulent. The deadly quarrels of its component members with each other interfere materially with their unity of action against their common enemy. Now and then, however, a common sentiment seems to awaken in them that they had better postpone their private disputes until they have compassed by their united energies the fall of Babylon. Such a phenomenon has appeared quite recently in the ecclesiastical heavens. The newspapers of the principal sects have resounded with a call for united efforts on the part of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarians, etc., against the progress of the Catholic Church in the United States. Dr. Bellows, who is as restless as if he were pursued by the Eumenides, and who seems to get into a more uncomfortable frame of mind every day as he prosecutes his travels, sends over a loud call showing the necessity of doing something to preserve that Protestantism which it has been the business of his life to overwhelm with ridicule and contempt. The liberal papers, false to their reiterated protestations of hatred against orthodox Protestantism and sympathy with Catholics, re-echo the sound, which is taken up by one and another of the lowing presses in turn, until each one quid lachrymabile mugit. Dear friends, what is the matter? If you will permit the citation of a somewhat trite classical passage, permit us to ask, Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? We have been much at a loss to divine the immediate exciting cause of such a sudden aggravation of symptoms in our domestic "sick man." We think, however, that we have at last discovered that we are the innocent cause ourselves, through a few little harmless tracts, which were intended as a poultice, but have proved, we suppose on account of the extreme irritability of the patient's skin, a violent blister. We made the discovery by reading the following circular, which we publish cheerfully, in order to promote as much as possible that free and lively discussion which our excellent friends at the Bible House desire:

(Private.)

American and Foreign Christian Union,
27 Bible House, New York,
June 17, 1868.

Mr. Editor:
Dear Sir: We are desirous of employing, in your journal, the pen of one of your ablest contributors, in the fair and thorough discussion of the recent publications and pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church.

You have doubtless seen some of the popular tracts of the "Catholic Publication Society." They have been circulated in all parts of the country with great assiduity. They are very ingenious and plausible, and very fallacious. It is matter of common interest to all who love evangelical truth that these fallacies should be promptly and effectively exposed.

We have a proposition to make which seems to us to be for the mutual advantage both of your enterprise and of ours. If you will send us the address of that one of your contributors or collaborators whose papers on this subject will be most acceptable to you and your readers, we will make proposals to him for contributions to your journal, we supplying him with a copy of the series of popular tracts of the "Catholic Publication Society," and such other documents as he may need, and paying for his literary labor at a generous rate of compensation.
If you shall succeed in introducing us to writers on the Roman Catholic controversy who are learned, accurate, and courteous, and at the same time lively and effective in their popular style, we shall hope to continue and renew an arrangement which must be for the advantage of all the parties to it, and of the great cause of Christian truth.

Yours respectfully,
J. Romeyn Berry,
H. C. Riley,
Leonard W. Bacon,
E. F. Hatfield,
Samuel I. Prime,

Committee on Publications of the "American and Foreign Christian Union."

Naturally, we have been on the alert ever since receiving this interesting circular, expecting a rare treat from the articles to be furnished by the learned, courteous, lively, and well-paid contributors to the press who must have jumped at once at this handsome offer. We have not yet gathered in a very ample collection of choice morçeaux as the result of our study of the anti-Catholic press. We have obtained, however, a few gleanings which may be indications of an abundant harvest yet to come. Here is one from The Episcopalian, which no reader of that paper will expect to find either accurate, courteous, or lively, but which, as communicating a piece of rare and recondite information, may fitly prove a sample of the "learned" style:

"It has been suggested—and, we think, not without some reason—that the origin of ritualism in the Protestant Episcopal Church may be traced to the Roman Catholic Church itself; in other words, that the Roman Church, with the view of proselyting the Episcopal Church, has sent among us secret emissaries, of the Jesuit stamp, who, while pretending to be Episcopalians, are really Romanists, and whose mission it is to introduce one Romish novelty after another, until the congregations in which they are introduced are gradually but surely drawn into the communion of the Romish Church.

"To those who have studied the far-seeing policy of the Roman Church, and its secret workings for ages past, this suggestion will not seem strange or far-fetched. That equally subtle means for proselyting have been used by that church in times past no one can doubt who has read its history; and what has been done can be done—or, at least, tried—again.

"Freese.
"Trenton, N.J., June, 1868."

The following, from The Brooklyn Union, if not learned or lively, is at least in a high degree "accurate and courteous," being a most respectful remonstrance against the audacity of Catholics in presuming to be so numerous, and to lay the corner-stone of a cathedral in open day on Sunday:

"He that Rules the City Rules the Country.—The Pope of Rome well knows this axiom. The Jesuits know it. The politician knows it. They all act upon it. Cities are chosen as their centres of organization. From these centres their power radiates through every town and village and hamlet and district of our land. In a government like our own, this is particularly true. The pulsations of life and power of our larger cities, both in religion and politics, indicate the condition, in these respects, of our whole country. Hence the favored policy of the Papal hierarchy of inducing its subjects, when emigrating to the United States, to settle within the limits or easy access of our cities. Statistics show that the foreign Papal immigration, East, West, North, and South, settle chiefly within or about our cities. No one with his eyes open has failed to see this with respect to New York, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Buffalo. The foreign population of these cities rule them. They present a majority of thirty thousand in New York. What may be their exact proportions in our other populous cities, the writer has at present no means of ascertaining. But from the number, the grandeur, and the costliness of their cathedrals and educational institutions in other cities—in such as Chicago and St. Louis—we should judge that their number is greater in proportion to their population than it is in New York. This statement has reference to the Papists. For the infidel proportion who come to our shores from Europe, and who have been driven to infidelity by the tyranny and wickedness of Papacy, have no sympathy with that system in propagating its means of worship. All their sympathies are with our free institutions. Their licentiousness and disregard of the Christian Sabbath are the fruit of their infidelity. Even for this the Papal Church is responsible before God. But the Papacy, in its spirit and in its policy and in its designs, is opposed to our republican government. It is the sworn inveterate enemy to every principle and policy which favors republicanism. No bishop, no priest, and no member of the Papal Church ever has been or ever can be a loyal subject of a free government. Every pretence or profession or act which they avow to the contrary is the necessary outgrowth of wilful deception, hypocrisy, and falsehood. Among the masses of her members an oath of loyalty may be the result of ignorance; and it may be permitted to remain of binding authority so long as it does not conflict with their first and paramount obligations with their church. But with the bishops, the priests, and the Jesuitical hordes of their hierarchy, an oath of loyalty or of testimony is of no value as a test of truthfulness. Nay, it is often taken as a means of deception, to accomplish some concealed purpose. Their fundamental doctrines of mental reservation and universal subordination to Rome necessarily exclude from their virtues that of true patriotism. That this hierarchy has for some years past been collecting, arranging, and concentrating the elements of her strength in and around the cities of the United States, is evident to any one who has watched its progress. Her power is abundantly manifest in the influence which she has exerted in the legislation of our cities and our states, in the appointments of many of our highest offices of trust and power, in the disposition and distribution of our public charities, and in the control of our popular system of education; and that the time has come, in their judgment, when she can, with safety to herself, openly assert her power, can be seen in the popular tracts, now numbering some thirty-one, of her religious press, in the public discussions of her periodicals, in her politico-religious organizations, as well as in her open and defiant Sabbath parades, and other desecrations of that blessed day. Let her have full scope to her power and freedom as a church, in a legitimate way. Let her seek to build up her cause as a system of religion, the same as Protestant churches in our country. But let her not attempt to ride rough-shod upon the rights of Protestants by her noisy parades, with drum and fife and boisterous shouts in front of our churches upon the Sabbath—by her insolent and brutal outrages upon unoffending Protestants when peaceably pursuing their avocations. Let her no longer refuse to listen to the respectful remonstrances of American citizens against such encroachments. Public religious services and the administration of the Lord's Supper in some of our churches were almost entirely prevented by the noise and confusion of the Papal parade on a late Sabbath. This nuisance has been repeated in New York and Brooklyn in opposition to the respectful but earnest petition of Protestant laymen and clergy. On these occasions, several of our largest streets were piled up with city passenger-cars, that were forced to stop running on account of the procession. And what was all this confusion, all this violation of law and order, upon the Christian Sabbath for? Why, simply that a single Papal congregation might lay the corner-stone of the church of the 'Immaculate Conception.' Hundreds of quiet and orderly churches must be interrupted in their worship, the rights of large corporations must be trampled under foot, and the stillness of the Sabbath be invaded by the drum and fife and shout of a drunken rabble, for the sake of a single Papal congregation! Such occasions are not without a purpose. They afford the priesthood a fine opportunity of testing the strength of numbers, of trying the patience of the Protestant community, of gradually corrupting their respect for the Christian Sabbath, and of intimidating politicians with a show of power. Their design is a political one. There is no religion about it. Her power is broken upon the 'Seven Hills' of Italy, and she is trying now to re-establish it in the metropolis of America. But who dare array himself against her avowed determination to subordinate all things to her purpose? What politician, what party, or what partisan newspaper dare oppose the political system of Papal hierarchy? It remains for the Protestant clergy of our evangelical denominations to take up the cause of religious liberty. No one will dare to speak out if they remain silent. The eyes of all are toward them. They must take the lead in the conflict with 'the man of sin.' God has thrown the responsibility upon them. They can, if they will, sway both the religious and political destinies of our nation. Let no one talk about the danger or the fanaticism of introducing politics into our pulpits. The days of such cowardly conservatism are past. Let politicians as well as Papists, at whose feet the former bow, be made to feel that patriotism is a Christian virtue, and that its sacred fire is kept alive and pure only in the breasts of those who swear by an open Bible and a free conscience. If our Protestant ministers will do their duty, the masses of our people will see the danger which threatens us. They will unite their strength in a successful issue with the powers of darkness, and our politicians, seeing the strength of such a combination, will withhold their sympathy and patronage from a system which, in the garb of religion, aims its death-blow at the very root of our civil liberty.
C."

The following is a specimen of the "lively and effective" style:

Catholicism.

A Reply To J. G. Parton's Article In The Atlantic Monthly.

This little treatise is respectfully presented to J. G. Parton and all our Catholic brethren, by their brother and friend, Charles W. Gilbert.

"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth."—Matthew xxviii. 18.

"This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."—Acts iv. 11, 12.

"It behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted."—Hebrews ii. 17, 18.

Galesburg, June 22, 1868.
Mr. J. G. Parton: Dear Sir: I flatter myself you will excuse me for the liberty I have taken in addressing you this letter. It has been called for by reading a communication in The Atlantic Monthly, in April last, respecting our Catholic brethren.

I have neither time nor space to write half I want to, only to mention a few points: And first, you say there is a difference between Catholics and Protestants in the mode of praying; you say a Protestant hides his face in his hands, but Catholics do not, though they kneel, but the body is upright. Dear sir, do you not know the reason? Our Catholic brethren worship images, which God has forbidden. Turn to the second commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath," etc. "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work," etc. Take your Bible and read all the commandments.

Dear sir, can you find one of our Roman Catholic brethren that keeps the commandments? Turn to the First Epistle general of John, second chapter, fourth verse, "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."

You speak of their communion. Do they drink the wine and eat the bread, as Christ has commanded? No, no! A little wafer is put on the tongue. Please turn to the seventeenth chapter of Revelation, fourth verse.

The next topic is the Catholic Sabbath-school. Sir, what is a Sabbath-school without the Bible to direct us how to teach little children the way of life and salvation? Do you not know that the priests do not allow the Bible to be read in a Sabbath-school nor in a day-school? This is the reason they will not send their children to the Protestant schools.

What said St. Paul to Timothy? "And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."—2 Timothy iii. 15, We read also, in the sixteenth verse, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

What said Jesus? "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."—John v. 39.

You say the children in the Sabbath-school sing to the Virgin Mary the following stanza, "O Mary! Mother," etc. Dear sir, who is this Mother Mary? Let Christ answer. Turn to Matthew xii. 50: "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Read also in Mark iii. 35; also Luke viii, 21.

You quote the prayer that the superintendent uttered, in Latin. How edifying that must have been to the children, especially when he used the word immaculate Host! Could the children have understood that word, they would have blushed.

You give us a glowing description of the different cathedrals, and how they are occupied. Now, my dear sir, let me tell you, the best prayer-meeting that I ever enjoyed was in a log-cabin. Read St. John iv. 23, 24. Jesus told the woman of Samaria that the hour had now come "when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Christ told the woman of Samaria she need not go up into the mountains nor to Jerusalem to worship the Father, but anywhere, in the log-cabin or in your house, if you worship God in spirit.

The next topic is, you say: "Our Catholic brethren are very candid, and are as truly and entirely convinced of the truth of their religion as any Protestant."

I am now almost seventy-three years of age, and have labored among our Catholic brethren more than forty years. I have seen many of them happily converted, born again; as Christ told Nicodemus, told him repeatedly, "Except a man be born again, he could not enter heaven."—John iii. Yes, I have seen them put off the old man with all his deeds and put on Christ; yes, his very countenance was changed; yes, he will not visit the Dutch gardens or saloons on the Sabbath. Said a converted Roman Catholic lady to me, the other day: "I have perfect peace now. When I belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, I was in constant misery."

Said a converted Catholic man, aged sixty-six years: "I never took any comfort before." I asked him if he was ready to die. He said, "Yes." I asked him how he knew. Putting his hand on his breast, he said, "Spirit tell me so." So Christ says his Spirit shall enlighten every man that cometh into the world.

In all my conversation with our Catholic brethren, I have never found the first one that could say with St. Paul: "I long to be absent from the body that I might be present with the Lord, that I might be clothed upon with another body like unto his."

Our Catholic brethren are taught that there is a purgatory. I wonder if St. Paul had to go there first. I have often asked our Catholic brethren where the penitent thief went to, that was crucified with Christ, when Christ said to him, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."

If there is a purgatory where we have to go to atone for our sins, Christ must have suffered in vain, though he cried on the cross, "It is finished."

I have seen Catholics die in despair. I had one in my employ as a sailor on the North River. He caught a severe cold; it ran him into a quick consumption. I asked him if he would like to have me read the Bible to him. He said, No; he said the priest had forbidden him to read the Bible or hear it read. As he was failing very fast, I went in again and asked him if he wished me to read to him in the Bible. He said, No, but wished I would go and call the priest. I did so, and after the priest went away, I went into his room and asked him if he was happy. He answered, No, and cried bitterly, and said, "I am going to hell! I am going to hell!" and died in a few minutes.

You next speak of young men that were studying for the ministry; you say they study Latin, Greek, and theology. Dear sir, what is theology? If I understand it, it is a Science of God. How can they study theology without the Bible, the word of God? They are not allowed the Bible, so a converted Roman Catholic priest published to the world, at least he said that there was not more than one in twenty that ever saw a Bible.

You say the Catholic Church is getting very rich, I do not doubt it. Oh! how I pity the poor Catholic brethren. See how they toil and work to support the priest and the nunneries, and to build meeting-houses to please the eye and charm the weak minded. And what do they get for all this? Let echo answer. Look at our poor-houses. Every winter thousands have to go to our poor-houses to be taken care of by our Protestant churches. Here in our city many would have perished this last winter, had not our poor-master fed them.

You next give us a history of a wonderful miracle that was performed in Washington in 1824. Dear sir, do you think any Protestant with one eye, and that half-open, can be made to believe such nonsense? If you wish to see miracles wrought in the nineteenth century, just give the Bible to our Catholic brethren, then you may see greater miracles performed than you speak of; for to see a man that is dead in sin changed to a spiritual man, made alive in Christ, is a miracle.

Our Catholic brethren are taught that their church was the first church. Let me inform you that there was no Roman Catholic church on the earth for three hundred years after the death of the apostles. Permit me to quote a few passages from the word of God. 2 Thessalonians ii. 3, 4: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." Could an angel from heaven portray the character of the pope in any plainer language?

I Timothy iv. 1-5: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer."

Paul speaks of visiting the churches; that is to say, little bands of Christians. We read in the Acts of the Apostles xv. 3: "And being brought on our way by the church;" that is to say, a few Christians. Read, also, xvi. 5: "Likewise greet the church that is in their house," etc.

You will now turn to Revelation xiii. 16-18: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads." Now, every true Catholic receives the sign of the cross in his forehead every Ash-Wednesday; every priest, when he is ordained for the ministry, receives the mark of the cross in his right hand.

A converted Roman Catholic priest, going through one of the streets in a Southern city, picked up the thirteenth chapter of Revelation, and, reading it, he was convinced that he was one of those that had received the mark in his right hand, and was led by the Spirit to see his error and was happily converted, and became a Baptist minister.

Give the Bible to all our Roman Catholic priests and brethren in America, and in less than five years there would not be a Roman Catholic church in existence. Rev. Mr. Hyacinthe, a Roman Catholic priest, in Paris, France, has come out in favor of reading the Bible. He is now preaching in the Notre Dame cathedral to audiences of three thousand. He presses upon the people, in the most eloquent words, the study of the Bible.

The news from Italy is very interesting. Thousands of our Catholic brethren are inquiring and receiving the Bible, that they may learn the way to Christ. In less than five years there cannot be found a Roman Catholic in all that vast kingdom, except in Rome, where the Catholic religion has to be protected by an army. That is a curious religion that has to be protected by the SWORD. Shame! shame!

That great city is soon to be destroyed, according to God's word. See Revelation xiv. 20: "And the wine-press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even unto the horses' bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. "You are aware, I suppose, that the pope claims two hundred miles square around Rome. The above number of furlongs make just that number of miles. Let Bonaparte send ALL his armies to Rome, and he could not prevent this prophecy from being fulfilled when the time comes.

Dear sir, you have a great deal to say about our Catholic brethren exercising greet faith. Paul says, "Faith without works is dead." What are the works that God requires? Let me tell you. It is not only to clothe the naked and feed the hungry; but it is to go out into the highways and hedges, and invite the sinner, the wayward—yes, the poor drunkard—to become reconciled to God; to put off the old man with all his deeds, and put on the new man which is after Christ. Did you ever learn of one of our Catholic brethren doing the like?

You speak of children being confirmed. What does that mean? Why, made Christians. Dear sir, who can change the heart of a child or a man? No one but God. What saith the Bible, speaking of those that were Christ's? "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."—John i. 13.

You tell us that in this easy and pleasant way our Catholic brethren join the church. Dear sir, does joining a church make a man Christ-like? Christ says: "If ye have my spirit, ye are mine; if ye have not my spirit, ye are none of mine."—Romans viii. 9. Read the whole chapter; it contains the whole plan of salvation.

Our Catholic brethren are taught that the Virgin Mary was born immaculate! What blasphemy! And also that the church is infallible! When Christ asked Peter and the disciples, "Whom say ye that I am?" Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Upon this acknowledgment or confession of Peter, that Christ was the son of the living God, Christ said, "I will build my church"—not upon Peter, as the pope claims.

You say our Catholic brethren are not ashamed to be found praying. Please turn to the sixth chapter of Matthew, and read the sixth verse, which is as follows: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

You say the superintendent of the Catholic Sabbath-school you visited told you that he had visited many of the Protestant Sabbath-schools and had copied after them. I wonder where he found a Protestant Sabbath-school without the Bible!

You say that the Catholics expect to rule in this country, and that all Protestant children will be in their Sabbath-schools. Let me say, "Let God be true, but every man a liar."—Romans iii. 4. St. Paul has prophesied that the time shall soon come when the Sword of the Spirit SHALL destroy the Man of Sin.

There are thousands of our Catholic brethren in America that are sick of the Catholic religion, and will soon leave it. When I was engaged in teaching a Sabbath-school of Catholic children, a father and mother called on me and wanted to put their children in my school. I said, "Your priest will not allow you to do so." They said they did not care anything about their priest; they had been brought up in ignorance; they did not want their children brought up so.

You cannot tell us of a Sabbath-school in all Italy, or in any other country where the Roman Catholics rule, except those that have been established by Protestants.

You tell us about Roman Catholic benevolent societies. Where, oh! where is there an asylum for the blind and deaf and dumb, that they may learn to read the word of God, and get a knowledge of our Saviour Christ Jesus, and learn the way to heaven? You cannot show one in any Catholic country.

Permit me to give you another graphic picture from the Bible, giving a picture of the priests' dresses. Please turn to Revelation xvii. 4, 5; "And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand," etc.

Now, all this I have seen in the great cathedral in Montreal. I have seen our Catholic priests and brethren bowing down to graven images for several minutes.

Mr. J. G. Parton, dear sir, I sincerely pray that you will, after reading this communication, repent, (not do penance,) and turn to the Lord, and not be under the necessity of calling upon the rocks and mountains to fall on you and hide you from the face of the Lamb. (Revelation vi. 16.) Do read, also, verse 17: "For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Do read this communication carefully, and pray that it may be blessed to your salvation.

No more at present, and I remain your friend in Christ,

Charles W. Gilbert.

New Publications.

The Vickers and Purcell Controversy.
Respectfully presented to all the lovers of truth.
By John B. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati,
Printed for the benefit of Mt. St. Mary's Seminary of the West. Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Holy Apostolic See, Cincinnati and New York. 1868.

The gentleman calling himself the Rev. Thomas Vickers, Minister of the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati, is a living contradiction in terms. According to the statement in the volume before us, he believes in no personal God, declares "the Christ" to be "a theological fiction," and the Bible "a crutch." What there is "reverend" about Mr. Vickers, what sense there is in his claiming the title of minister, or what appropriateness in his professing to belong to a Congregational Society, we are at a loss to divine. What greater absurdity of nomenclature can there be, than calling a pantheistic lecturer against Christianity and Theism by the name of a Congregational minister? Of what use is a church, or a minister, on his principles, or, rather, denial of principles? Nevertheless, in this very absurd and unnecessary character of minister, Mr. Vickers appeared at the laying of the corner-stone of a new temple of German infidelity, denominated, with a ludicrous disregard of common sense, St. John's Church, and made a speech, which occasioned the controversy contained in the little volume under notice. In this speech, Mr. Vickers welcomed and blessed the undertaking of the society of German infidels calling themselves St. John's Church, in the name of the Anglo-American portion of the population of Cincinnati. At the same time, he gave utterance to the most contemptuous scorn of everything which the professedly Christian part of that population holds as sacred and divine in religion. This was, to say the least of it, a piece of cool impertinence on the part of the young gentleman in question. Mr. Vickers, we believe, passed a few years in Germany, studying what he calls "science;" and he appears to have returned with a strong impression on his own mind that he is destined to enlighten the benighted believers in the Christian revelation in Cincinnati with the rays of this German luminary. He is not the first to engage in this experiment. It has been tried before, and we recommend to the attention of the illuminati of Cincinnati the following description of its result, from the pen of Dr. Hedge, of Harvard University. It is extracted from an article in the Christian Examiner:

"Some thirty years ago, a club was formed of young men, mostly preachers of the Unitarian connection, with a sprinkling of elect ladies—all fired with the hope of a new era in philosophy and religion, which seemed to them about to dawn upon the world. There was something in the air—a boding of some great revolution—some new avatar of the Spirit, at whose birth these expectants were called to assist

'Of old things, all are over old:
Of old things, none are good enough:
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.'

"For myself, though I hugely enjoyed the sessions, and shared many of the ideas which ruled the conclave, and the ferment they engendered, I had no belief in ecclesiastical revolutions to be accomplished with set purpose; and I seemed to discern a power and meaning in the old, which the more impassioned would not allow. I had even then made up my mind, that the method of revolution in theology, is not discussion, but development. My historical conscience, then as since, balanced my neology, and kept me ecclesiastically conservative, though intellectually radical. There haunted me that verse in Goethe's bright song, 'The General Confession,' as applicable to ecclesiastical incendiarism as it is to political:

'Came a man would fain renew me,
Made a botch and missed his shot.
Shoulder shrugging, prospects gloomy:
He was called a patriot.

'And I cursed the senseless drizzle,
Kept my proper goal in view:
Blockhead! when it burns, let sizzle;
When all's burned, then build anew.'

Others judged differently; they saw in every case of dissent, and in every new dissentient, the harbinger of the New Jerusalem. 'The present church rattles ominously,' they said; 'it must vanish presently, and we shall have a real one.' There have been some vanishings since then. Ah me! how much has vanished! Of that goodly company, what heroes and heroines have vanished from the earth! Thrones have toppled, dynasties have crumbled, institutions that seemed fast-rooted in the everlasting hills have withered away. But the church that was present then, and was judged moribund by transcendental zeal, and rattled so ominously in transcendental ears, is present still.

"It was finally resolved to start a journal that should represent the ideas which had mainly influenced the association already tending to dissolution. How to procure the requisite funds was a question of some difficulty, seeing how hardly philosophic and commercial speculation conspire. An appeal was made. Would Mammon have the goodness to aid an enterprise whose spirit rebuked his methods and imperilled his assets? The prudent God disclaimed the imputed verdure; and the organ of American Transcendentalism, with no pecuniary basis, committed to the chance and gratuitous efforts and editing of friends, if intellectually and spiritually prosperous, had no statistical success. It struggled, through four years, with all the difficulties of eleemosynary journalism; and then, significantly enough, with a word concerning the 'Millennial Church,' sighed its last breath, and gave up the ghost. I prize the four volumes among the choicest treasures of my library. They contain some of Emerson's, of Theodore Parker's, of Margaret Fuller's, of Thoreau's best things; not to speak of writers less absolute and less famous.

"Meanwhile the association, if so it could be termed, had gradually dissolved. Some of the members turned papists—I should say, sought refuge in the bosom of the Catholic Church. A few of the preachers pursued their calling, and perhaps have contributed somewhat to liberalize and enlarge the theology of their day. Some have slipped their moorings on this bank and shoal of time. One sank beneath the wave, whose queenly soul had no peer among the women of this land. Of one

'A strange and distant mould
Wraps the mortal relics cold.'

Finally, a fragment of this strangely compounded body lodged in a neighboring town, and became the nucleus of an agricultural enterprise in which the harvest truly was not plenteous, and the competent laborers few; and of which, the root being rottenness, the blossoms soon went up as dust."

Mr. Vickers may thank the Archbishop of Cincinnati for having given his very boyish lucubrations a little momentary notoriety, which they never could have acquired by their own merit. They are crude, ill-mannered, replete with commonplace, effete, and senseless vituperations of all that is venerable in Catholicity and Christianity, and betray an ignorance of the subjects treated of which makes them unworthy of any serious attention. The point which the discussion chiefly turns upon is "freedom of thought." If Mr. Vickers is a disciple of the German pantheistic school, as we suppose him to be, he is not in a condition to maintain that there is any such thing as thought or freedom. We intend to give abundant proof of this assertion, in a series of articles, to be published in our Magazine, on Pantheism, in which we shall show, to the satisfaction of any person capable of metaphysical reasoning, that pantheism destroys the possibility of thought, in the true sense of the word, as the intellection of real, objective truth. Pantheism destroys, also, all possibility of freedom by reducing all phenomena to a fatal, invincible necessity. A pantheist is bound to accept all the persecutions of the middle ages, all the definitions of the church, and the encyclical of the pope, as manifestations of God. Our godlike friends are too much like the wife of the Connecticut corporal, who replied to the query of her innocent offspring, "O ma! are we all corporals now?" with the haughty rejoinder, "No, indeed! only your pa and I." Mr. Vickers and the members of the free-thinking coterie are not the only participators in the universal deity. If Mr. Vickers's brilliant exposition of the doctrine of the immaculate conception was a divine inspiration, Archbishop Purcell was equally moved by divine inspiration to the paternal castigation which he administers to his young and somewhat forward fellow-celestial. In fact, Mr. Vickers, the archbishop, the book containing their controversy, The Catholic World, ourselves, our readers, St. Thomas, Torquemada, Luther, Heidelberg University, and the Jesuits, are all one thing, or one nothing; a Seyn, or a Werden, or a Nichtseyn; all bubbles on the fathomless ocean of infinite—nonsense. It is a wonder that Mr. Vickers lays so much to heart, and makes such a serious business out of that which has no reality. A nephew of the great German philosopher, Hegel, who was also a favorite pupil of Feuerbach, and who is now a devout Catholic, told us, some time ago, that he asked Feuerbach why philosophy was making no progress, but seemed to be at a stand-still. The latter replied, that they had already proved by philosophy the nothingness of everything, and it was, therefore, useless to push philosophy any further, adding, that it was time to go back to common sense. Such is the end of that lawless, intellectual activity which Mr. Vickers calls "free thought." It is like a head of steam that bursts its boiler, and is then dispersed in the circumambient atmosphere.

Memoirs and Letters of Jennie C. White—Del Bal.
By her mother, Rhoda E. White,
1 vol. royal 8vo, pp. 363. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1868.

We must presage our notice of this interesting book, by saying we have a dislike to memoirs written by fond and partial friends. Lives of the saints we love to read, but our digestion was early impaired by the memoirs of good children (who all died young) with which we were fed for Sunday food, and we have latterly been in the bad habit of turning away from a book labelled, Memoirs of, etc.

However, we read Jennie's life with interest; and it is a beautiful story, giving to the reader a delightful insight into a truly Catholic family, where the breath of piety permeates the daily walk of every member, mingling with and heightening the light-hearted pleasures peculiar to the seasons of childhood and youth. The tale of her courtship and marriage is told with a sweet and winning grace, which charms us by its naturalness. Quite unlike the prevailing spirit and sentiment of "Young America" is the history of the prompt obedience to the mandate of parental authority, in giving up their engagement. The accepted lover, a resident of Santiago, New Granada, had promised his aged father not to forsake his own country, and Jennie's father could not give his consent to the taking of his first-born to that far-off foreign land. After a struggle, they parted with aching hearts, released from their engagement; but the influence of the true woman in the mother reunited that broken bond.

Contrary to the fate of many American girls who go to foreign homes, Jennie's marriage was an exceedingly happy one. The secret is very plain—they were both earnest Catholics. Oneness in faith, and earnest-heartedness in that faith, are the best securities for happiness in married life. The sight of this happy young creature, leaving so fond a circle of friends, and such a home as Jennie left behind in New York, to go to a comparatively unknown land—a country distracted by revolutions, with churches closed and priests exiled—gives us a glowing picture of the self-sacrificing spirit of true love. Her journeys by land and by sea, before she reached her destination, were perilous indeed; and we could not but ask, Yankee-like, why such a refined and cultivated and intelligent people as those among whom her lot was cast should never have provided some more comfortable way of reaching their country. She was the first American lady there, and attracted much attention and admiration by her brave, active spirit, as well as by her large Catholic heart. Her letters to her home friends are lovely from their childlike simplicity and truthfulness; giving us glimpses of many homesick heartaches, even when she was decking herself for the dance. Sometimes there appears a little excess in her efforts to be gay, when she writes, "I danced every piece but one till five in the morning." Mrs. Del Bal went to New Granada at a time when the so-called "Liberals," under Mosquera, were in the ascendant, proclaiming a pretended religious liberty, of which some of the first acts were the disbanding of all religious communities, turning the sisters upon the world, shutting up the churches, banishing the priests, unless they took an oath whereby they would cease to be Catholics; in fact, Mosquera made himself pope. Professing to establish a government in which there should be no connection between church and state, the government framed this article for the twenty-third of their Constitution:

"In order to sustain the national sovereignty and to maintain public peace and security, the national government, and in some cases the state government, shall exercise the right of supreme inspection over all religious worships, as the law shall determine."

This is a law of liberty very like those the English Catholics enjoyed under Queen Elizabeth.

Mrs. Del Bal exerted herself to give the press at the North the true state of the case with regard to this matter, since the public papers have loudly lauded Mosquera and his government. How far she succeeded in influencing minds that swallow eagerly anything called "liberal," we are not told. Our friend Jennie was loyal to her heart's core, and never ceased to call herself and her husband American citizens; and her thorough celebration of the "glorious Fourth" was a complete success. American thrift and industry carried her through what would have been impossible to a New Granadian.

But it is Jennie's almost superhuman efforts to revive the faith in the land of her adoption which excite our wonder and admiration, even more than the tender breathings of her woman's heart, separated for ever from the earliest loved. She had everything to struggle against in her work; "deplorable ignorance among the lower classes, and the falling away from faith and duty in the educated;" and this in a land once hallowed by the daily sacrifice. Well might she call the country "God forsaken," when those who should have cared for the sheep became themselves grievous wolves devouring God's heritage. The secret of the country's desolation we may read in this sentence:

"It is a well-known fact to Protestant travellers and a wound in the heart of the Catholic world, that the Catholic priesthood in this part of the world and in the West India Islands, scandalize the faithful. Why are they permitted to remain in the church? is asked often by Protestant and Catholic. Because they are sustained by a government which will not acknowledge papal authority; and if the archbishop were to remove them to-morrow, if need be, they would be reinstated by the bayonet. Hence these scandals."

But we turn from this sad picture to our young friend. Working with all the ardor of a soul given to God, filled with the love of Christ, her prayers and labors brought forth abundant and immediate fruits; but not till that day when the Great Master shall make up his jewels will it be known how many were brought back to faith and duty by her efforts. The missionary spirit pervaded all her life, and we may believe that love for souls, in part, led her to give her consent to so sad and final a parting from her early home; for she laid her plans for these poor, neglected people before she left her father's roof. She found some pious, devoted women in Santiago, (where are they not found?) and she gave them work to do. Everything prospered in her hands: Sunday-schools, altar societies, associations of the Sacred Heart; and at last, through her instrumentality, the laws were repealed that closed the churches, the Te Deum was sung, the sanctuary lamp was relighted, and 'la nina Jennie' was acknowledged, by the grateful people, as a public blessing God sent.

It is extremely touching to mark how, amid the constant terror of revolution, the wearing care of churches, hospitals, Sunday-schools, altar societies, plantations, and housekeeping, with a retinue of easy-going, lazy servants, she turns to entertain a dear friend with tales of her beloved parents, recalling the happy and united life at home, and then runs to console these absent ones by telling them, in her letters, with the artlessness of a child, that her husband must be good, since she is so happy with him, away from all she loved before! Only four years was she permitted to cheer the heart of her fond husband—only four years to lead the life of a devoted missionary in that desolate vineyard. The snapping of the chain by death that bound that household; the departure of her noble father—we may well believe— coming upon a heart filled with care for the souls about her, lying in worse than heathen darkness, hastened her own death.

As we close the volume, we can not mourn for her nor for her dear family; it is a blessed privilege to have such a friend in heaven.

"Life is only bright when it proceedeth
Toward a truer, deeper life above:
Human love is sweetest when it leadeth
To a more divine and perfect love."

No, we mourn for Santiago, and pray our dear Lord to compassionate a country so piteously torn by revolutions, and abandoned by those who should be first to hear the cry that comes over the land to all Catholics, "Send us priests who have an apostolic spirit, good judgment, and tact!"

The publisher's portion of the work is well done. It is well printed on fine paper, and the binding is in keeping with the rest of the book. It is, in fact, the handsomest book Mr. Donahoe ever published, and we are glad to see so great an improvement in his book-making.

The Woman Blessed by all Generations; or,
Mary the Object of Veneration, Confidence, and Imitation to all Christians.
By the Rev. Raphael Melia, D.D.
London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1868.
For sale at The Catholic Publication House, New York.

Dr. Melia is an Italian priest, residing in London; a man of solid learning, great zeal for the conversion of Protestants, and possessing a competent knowledge of the English language. His work is a comprehensive treatise on the dignity and office of the Blessed Virgin, and the reasons for the veneration and invocation of Mary practised in the church; to which is added a devotional treatise on the imitation of her virtues. The author goes thoroughly into the arguments from Scripture, tradition, reason, theology, and antiquities. His style is lively, popular, and somewhat diffuse, so that his learning is brought to the level of the understanding of ordinary readers, and his arguments made plain by ample and minute explanations. The book is also illustrated by fac-similes from ancient works of art. It is a treasury of knowledge on the charming and delightful subject of which it treats, and both Catholics and Protestants who wish to gain thorough, solid information respecting the Catholic devotion to Mary, with ease and pleasure to themselves, will find this book to be the very one they are in need of. The author is entitled to the thanks of all English-speaking Catholics for this labor of love, and we trust that his excellent work may be the means of increasing and diffusing, both in England and America, that solid and fervent devotion to the Blessed Mother of God which is both the poetry and an integral part of the practical piety of our religion.

We have just received from Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, The Acts and Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. The Catholic World, for August, contained an elaborate article on this work, written from an advance copy kindly furnished by Mr. Murphy. It is unnecessary to say anything more with regard to its contents, except to reiterate what was then said as to its external appearance. It is a handsome volume, finely printed on good paper, and bound in various styles and in the best manner known to the art of binding, and is a credit to the publisher. It is for sale at the Catholic Publication House, New York.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 07, APRIL 1868 TO SEPTEMBER, 1868 ***

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Table of Contents

The Catholic World. A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science.

- Vol. VII. April To September, 1868.

- New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1868.

- John A. Gray & Green, Printers, 16 and 18 Jacob St., New York.

- Contents.

- Poetry.

- New Publications.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Vol. VII., No. 37.—April, 1868.

- The Monks Of The West. [Footnote 1] By The Count De Montalembert.

- O'Neill And O'Donnell In Exile. [Footnote 13]

- The Cross.

- The Story of a Conscript. Translated From The French.

- XIX.

- XX.

- XXI.

- XXII.

- The Episcopalian Crisis.

- Bishop Doyle. [Footnote 20]

- Iona to Erin!

- Magas; or, Long Ago. A Tale Of The Early Times.

- Chapter VII.

- Chapter VIII.

- Translated From The French. The Unity Of The Human Race.

- Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

- Holy Week In Jerusalem.

- Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

- Chapter I.

- Chapter II.

- The Church Review and Victor Cousin. [Footnote 31]

- The Tears Of Jesus.

- Sister Simplicia.

- The Merit Of Good Works

- Full Of Grace.

- Translated From L'Economiste Belge. How Our History Will Be Told In The Year 3000.

- Plan For A Country Church.

- Description.

- Miscellany.

- New Publications.

- Books Received.

The Catholic World. Vol. VII., No. 38.—May, 1868.

- Tennyson In His Catholic Aspects.

- Poland

- Professor Draper's Books. [Footnote 45]

- Morning At Spring Park.

- Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

- Chapter III.

- Chapter IV.

- Chapter V.

- The Roman Gathering. [Footnote 46] By W. G. Dix.

- "The United Churches Of England And Ireland, In Ireland." [Footnote 47]

- Love's Burden.

- Florence Athern's Trial.

- II.

- III.

- Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

- Popular Education. [Footnote 51]

- All Souls' Day—1867.

- Is it Honest? [Footnote 52]

- Magas; or, Long Ago. A Tale Of The Early Times.

- Chapter IX.

- Chapter X.

- Chapter XI.

- Chapter XII.

- Conclusion.

- Translated From Le Correspondant. Abyssinia And King Theodore. By Antoine D'Abbadie.

- II.

- III.

- IV.

- V.

- VI.

- New Publications.

The Catholic World. Vol. VII., No. 39.—June, 1868.

- Edmund Campion.

- The Catholic Sunday-School Union. [Footnote 56]

- Sonnet On "Le Recit D'une Soeur," By Mrs. Augustus Craven.

- Nellie Netterville; or, One Of The Transplanted.

- Chapter VI.

- Chapter VII.

- Chapter VIII.

- Mexico, By Baron Humboldt [Footnote 57]

- One Fold.

- Translated From The French Of M. Vitet. Science And Faith. Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion, By M. Guizot.

- I.

- II.

- Cowper, Keble, Wordsworth; Or, "Quietist" Poetry, And Its Influence On Society.

- The Early Irish Church. [Footnote 77]

- My Angel.

- Translated From The French. An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 78]

- The Episcopalian Confessional.

- Sketches Drawn From The Life Of St. Paula, By The Abbe Lagrange, Vicar-general Of Orleans. In Three Chapters.

- Chapter I.

- Bound With Paul.

- Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles. The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.

- II.

- III.

- Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. [Footnote 95]

- Translated From Etudes Religieuses, Etc., Par Des Peres De La Compagnie De Jesus. The Flight Of Spiders. A Paper Read Before The French Academy Of Science, March, 1867.

- I. Threads Thrown Out By Spiders.

- II. Flight Of Spiders.

- III. How Long They Can Remain In The Atmosphere?

- IV. To What Height Do They Raise Themselves in the Atmosphere?

- V. Conjectures On The Mode Of Building Of Spiders In The Air.

- Translated From The "Revue Du Monde Catholique." John Tauler. By Ernest Hello.

- II.

- New Publications.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Vol. VII., No. 40.—July, 1868.

- A Plea For Liberty Of Conscience.

- Benediction.

- Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

- Chapter IX.

- Chapter X.

- Chapter XI.

- Translated From The French Of M. Vitet. Science And Faith. Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion, By M. Guizot. Conclusion.

- III.

- IV.

- Saint Mary Magdalen. From The Latin Of Petrarch.

- Glimpses Of Tuscany. Santa Maria Del Fiore—The Duomo.

- I.

- The Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England. By An English Catholic.

- Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's Life of St. Paula. In Three Chapters.

- Chapter II.

- To The Count De Montalembert, With A Copy Of "Inisfail." [Footnote 149]

- The Legend of Glastonbury.—A. D. 62.

- The Sun. [Footnote 154]

- Translated From The French. An Italian Girl Of Our Day. [Footnote 155]

- Continued From Page 372.

- The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City.

- Wild Flowers.

- Translated From The French. Faith And Poetry Of The Bretons.

- Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

- New Publications

- Books Received.

The Catholic World. Vol. VII., No. 41.—August, 1868.

- A New Face On An Old Question.

- Nellie Netterville.

- Chapter XII.

- Chapter XIII.

- Chapter XIV.

- Newman's Poems. BY H. W. Wilberforce

- Sonnet.

- The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. [Footnote 181]

- Translated From The French. An Italian Girl Of Our Day.

- Concluded.

- Memoirs Of Count Segur.

- Notre Dame De Garaison.

- Count Ladislas Zamoyski. Translated From The French Of Ch. De Montalembert.

- The Catholic Church And The Bible.

- Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's Life Of St. Paula. In Three Chapters. Concluded.

- Chapter III.

- Glimpses Of Tuscany.

- II. The Boboli Gardens.

- Translated From Le Correspondant. Anecdotical Memoirs By A Former Page Of The Emperor Nicholas.

- Translated From The French Of The Pere Landriot— Addressed To Women Of The World.

- Household Duties.

- A Sister's Story. [Footnote 220]

- Translated From The French. Breton Legend Of St. Christopher.

- The Sanitary And Moral Condition Of New York City.

- New Publications

- Books Received.

The Catholic World. Vol. VII., No. 42.—September, 1868.

- The Veneration Of Saints And Holy Images.

- Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.

- Chapter XV.

- Chapter XVI.

- Chapter XVII.

- The Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac, Canonized By Pope Pius IX. In 1867.

- From The Latin Of Prudentius. An Elegy.

- Translated From Der Katholik. The Ancient Irish Church.

- II.

- III.

- European Prison Discipline.

- I. — Newgate.

- II. Saint Lazare.

- Translated From Le Correspondant. A Heroine Of Conjugal Love. Marquise De La Fayette.

- Translated From The Revue Du Monde Catholique. Flaminia. By Alexandre De Bar.

- John Sterling.

- Saint Columba.

- Gheel. A Colony Of The Insane, Living In Families And At Liberty.

- Life's Charity.

- The Rights Of Catholic Women. By A Lady.

- The Last Gasp Of The Anti-catholic Faction.

- New Publications.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE